


Breaking Destiny

by Nirah



Series: Breaking Destiny [1]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: AU, Drama & Romance, Graphic Sex, M/M, traumatic events
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-05 10:59:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 93
Words: 286,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14042799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nirah/pseuds/Nirah
Summary: The prophecy was clear. The Doctor's song would end that day. But the Master didn't know that, and even if he had, he had never been one to follow rules anyway. Now with his body breaking down from his sabotaged resurrection, he has to co-operate with the Doctor in order to stay alive. And with the drumming silenced, he realizes he must regain his old friend's trust.Begins during the events of The End of Time.





	1. The Master

There had been a moment—a very long overdue moment. His chest felt heavy, his throat felt dry, and his vision was blurred by the bizarre presence of tears.

He felt sad. Why should he feel sad? He was frustrated, yes. Angry. The pounding in his ears that had plagued him for centuries had been placed there intentionally. His intelligence had been insulted by labelling him a simple pawn of Rassilon. He was furious, of course!

But why was he sad?

Why was he not fishing through his internal bag of tricks for a way out? Why was he not taking this silence as an opportunity to persuade the Doctor again? Why was it that all he could do was stare down the barrel of the gun, into the brown eyes behind it, and do nothing?

When the Doctor first pointed the gun at him, he was only mildly surprised. He argued, blamed Rassilon, followed the Doctor's thinking and tried to manipulate it. He thought he had won when the gun's barrel suddenly swung back the other way. They both knew, deep down, that the Doctor would never kill him.

But when he found the gun pointing at himself again, it felt as though he simply deflated. The Doctor's eyes were full of fear and emotion, which told him that maybe the moment had come. Maybe he had finally done enough to push the Doctor over the edge and make him pull the trigger.

It was in that moment—in a singular second—when a sudden rush of memory came to him. He supposed it was exactly what the Doctor had tried to bring out in him so long ago, when he was dying.

" _You and me, all the things we've done..."_

Once upon a time, they had been like brothers. Long before all of this, when life was so much simpler, they had loved each other. Even once they had gone their separate ways and chosen their own paths, there had laid a small but lingering connection. The Master had always viewed it all as a game, and the Doctor was always prepared to give him another chance.

Despite everything, he had never thought that the Doctor would ever choose to kill him.

It was an odd feeling for him. When his own wife shot him dead in his past life, he had felt nothing more than surprised amusement in regard to her actions. But here, now, the Doctor's finger set firmly on the trigger, he felt what he could only imagine was heartbreak. The Doctor had no love left for him anymore.

"Get out of the way."

It took a moment for the idea to take hold in the state of confusion he was in. He had been waiting for the familiar bang and thump to the chest. But the sense of it crept through after a moment, and he couldn't help but smile. If there was anything he could trust the Doctor to do, it was to find a way to avoid bloodshed. He would usually call him a coward, as he had moments before when he first faced the gun, but the sense of relief washing over him was simply too powerful to care.

With a blinding light, the white-point star was shattered. He was unable to get back to his feet right away; his head was suddenly empty. The drumming had stopped! For a long moment, his world was nothing but a beautiful silence—a mere moment of the purest peace he'd ever known.

He was still gathering himself when he heard Rassilon scream, "You'll die with me, Doctor!"

"I know."

And the Doctor stood there, simply waiting for death as though that was exactly what he has been expecting all along. If there was anything else you could trust him to do, it was to unnecessarily sacrifice himself.

There were too many unfamiliar sensations for him to sort anything out. He had no time to think or plan. His mind was too distracted searching for the missing sound to help him now. All he knew was that he couldn't let the Doctor die now, and all he could do was act.

"Get out of the way."

He saw the shock on the Doctor's face, but this was not the time to tease him. Rassilon didn't even put up a decent fight. The electricity coursed through his body without resistance, while the Master felt his own body beginning to fail. The link was beginning to fade with its hosts, the portal beginning to shrink. He kept attacking, trying to finish the job, but he felt the power of the collapsing portal trying to drag him in.

The light was blinding, the pull of the gravity immense. He watched Rassilon fall and he grabbed desperately at the pieces of furniture nearest him, trying to fight the pull. The first desk he grabbed was too light, and simply shot towards the portal, losing him precious space. He quickly sought another anchor and grasping at one of the enormous computers, holding on so tightly he thought his fingers might break.

Time seemed to slow then. He watched his fingers turning white with strain, watched how the sleeves of his shirt whipped violently about, trying to reach the portal. He didn't want to look at it, didn't want to know how close he was to being pulled in. He turned instead to the Doctor, and was surprised to see him standing perfectly fine—apparently the portal didn't want to take him with it. He was trying to protect his eyes from the light, obviously blinded by it.

What would happen to them now?

The pull suddenly increased ten-fold and his fingers were ripped free. He hurled through the air towards the closing portal, stretching out all his limbs, hoping to catch on to something. His leg struck another computer, twisting with a distinct snapping sound and slamming him into the side of the machine. He had no time to be shocked or to feel the pain, he simply held on.

The air whistled as it tried to rush through the shrinking gap, and then suddenly it was closed and a shockwave rang through the room as the environment stabilized. The blast sent him crashing back to the floor, and a tumbling sound off to the side told him that the Doctor had been thrown off his feet.

As he laid on the floor, trying to figure out which way was up, he thought that the drumming had returned. He listened to the furious thumping in disappointment until he noticed that the beat was beginning to slow, and realized that it was simply his own heartbeat reacting to all the commotion.

Glass scraped on the floor and a whisper floated across the room. "I'm alive."

The surprise in the Doctor's voice amused him to no end. Why was it that his plans never seemed to involve getting out in one piece? If there were humans involved then the humans must be saved, obviously, but the Doctor's own survival always seemed to be optional to him. Some would call it heroic, but the Master simply called it stupid.

"I'm alive!"

The Doctor's strange whimpering laughter seemed to echo through the air. It was so quiet. He could hear his own lungs slowly breathing in and out. If he listened hard enough, he was certain he could hear the blood travelling through his body.

He opened his mouth to say something—some cocky remark to annoy the Doctor in a clearly vulnerable moment—but a dreadful sound stopped him. Four knocks. Slow and precise. It was not in his head, of that he was certain, and one glance at the Doctor confirmed it.

He watched the Doctor's face set in a look of grim defeat as he slowly pulled himself to his feet, still unaware of the Master's presence, and turned to face the source of the sound. Some old man was stood in the radiation chamber, smiling awkwardly and gently knocking on the glass.

The two conversed briefly and the Master only half listened. Time seemed to distort as the pain in his leg was starting to make itself known, along with some other injuries he wasn't even aware that he had obtained. He focused on trying to stand while the Doctor threw some kind of temper tantrum on the other side of the room, knocking things over and shouting. Always so dramatic.

He knew exactly what he was thinking, and knew that the Doctor was once again going to fling himself into the arms of death for no reason other than that he thought he should. He'd gone quiet now. He couldn't see the Doctor's face, but could see that the old man's was a bizarre concoction of tear-soaked horror.

"No, don't! Please!" the old man cried as the Doctor stepped towards the radiation chamber and reached for the door handle.

"Wilfred, it would be my honour."

If he was going to save the fool, he had best do it now.

"You know," he called out, just as the Doctor's foot passed through the doorway. "You could always use the failsafe."

The Doctor's head whipped around so fast, it was surprising that he didn't break his neck, and then very hurriedly wiped his eyes. The Master chuckled, quite pleased with the reaction, and tried to steady himself on his feet. The leg was definitely broken. It throbbed painfully as he moved and hung at a slight angle once he was upright. He decided to clench his jaw, hold onto the computer console for balance, and try his best to look respectable. He fully intended to mock the Doctor for his shows of weakness today, and he certainly didn't want to give him any ammunition to return.

"I don't know much about these machines, Doctor, but a failsafe sounds like a much better plan to me." The old man shuffled his weight from one foot to the other nervously.

"What do you mean, a failsafe?" the Doctor demanded, immediate suspicion obvious in his voice.

"My plan was to make a world full of me. Why would I leave a precious person, such as myself, hopelessly trapped in a radiation chamber? Do you really think I would leave me in there without a failsafe? Of course I added one."

"That makes sense, doesn't it?" the old man said hopefully.

But the Doctor's eyes, still a little red from his earlier outburst, pierced him with distrust and he asked very simply: "Why?"

The Master couldn't blame him. It had been a rather unusual day for the both of them, and the Master had managed to stir up quite a bit of trouble. He was, in fact, telling the truth, but he couldn't expect the Doctor to take his word on something quite so important as this.

"You and me," he answered quietly, choosing this moment to make his injury known by making a tiny movement forward, allowing the Doctor to see him wince and favour his good leg. "We're the only ones left." Blood on his leg would make it look better. Was there blood? He stole a quick glance downward to check and saw that there wasn't, but there was blood on his shirt so he must have been bleeding somewhere. The Doctor couldn't ignore a wounded man.

The Doctor's eyes scanned him quickly, his mouth slightly open as he thought. "We just made sure of that," he murmured. "What's the goal here, Master?"

He staggered forward a couple of steps, emphasizing his broken leg. "If you go in there, you will, at the very least, need to regenerate, which will incapacitate you for several hours, maybe even days. And..." he glanced down at his leg again and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand, which then came away covered in blood. Excellent. "It would seem I need a doctor."

"Right. . ."

The old man looked back and forth between the two of them, clearly growing more stressed. "I'm the one in the box, and I say we listen to him, Doctor."

"Wilfred—"

"No. If it goes wrong, then I'm gone. Won't hurt the world as much as losing you," the old man (Wilfred, apparently) persisted. "And if it works, then everyone walks away happy. So I'm making the choice, and I'm choosing to try for the best. Now, please sir, tell me what I need to do . . . and if it's not too much trouble, with everyone alive at the end, yeah?"

The Master smiled and did a bow with a little flourish, just barely managing to maintain his balance for a moment of showing off. The process was simple enough—a few buttons followed by the code that routed through a separate system—and the door of the empty chamber pulled shut and sealed. The other door opened, producing a perfectly alive and healthy Wilfred, and the empty chamber flooded harmlessly with radiation. If the Doctor had had a little more control over himself, instead of being in such an obviously over-emotional state, he might have figured that out on his own.

The old man shook his hand happily and thanked him, while the Doctor continued to look at him with a mixture of distrust and confusion. He couldn't imagine why he was still looking at him that way, given that he had just saved his life twice now in about ten minutes. But there wasn't much time to wonder; his body was failing again and a fierce dizziness overtook him. With his injured leg unable to compensate for any wobble, he slid rather ungracefully to the floor.

He heard the old man exclaim "oh dear!" and suddenly felt the Doctor's hand on his forehead—a Time Lord's hands are a comfortingly cool temperature when you're not feeling well.

"Look at me. Look at me." The Doctor's voice sounded odd and distant. "Do you know why the resurrection wasn't completed? What happened?"

So many questions all the time—his old friend and enemy never knew how to simply relax. Who wanted to talk about science when it was so obviously the perfect time to sleep? Sleep sounded wonderful. His head rolled to one side and he spotted the old man staring down at him with his brows knitted together.

"Hello, Wilfred," he chirped, smiling. "I'm Harry Saxon. Did you vote for me?"

"I don't think I should've," he answered with a nervous chuckle.

A sharp slap to the face brought him rudely back to himself.

"What happened during the ritual?" the Doctor barked.

"A chemical counteragent!" he shouted back angrily, but the shout wasted any energy he had suddenly regained and his head flopped back onto the floor. "It was Lucy. My sweet Lucy."

As the darkness enveloped him, he remembered that Lucy had loved him once. Lucy was dead.

When he woke, the Doctor was still working on him. He was unsure of whether he was inside the TARDIS or not. The room was unfamiliar to him and was a clean surgical white with plenty of lighting. No windows. Only one door. And oh, so strangely silent.

He glanced down, trying to move as little as possible so that the Doctor didn't know he was awake yet. A small metal bowl sat next to him with a humble amount of blood and a few shards of glass in it. The Doctor worked intently, his glasses up on his forehead, stitching up a gash in the Master's thigh. Of course he was using stitches, and of course there was a cast on his leg—the Doctor was using the old-fashioned stuff instead of the quick fixes. Slowing the healing process, keeping the Master in a weak position for as long as possible. The Doctor intended to keep him.

It was then that he noticed the heart monitor. The Doctor had placed it carefully just opposite where he sat, a place where he could always see it in some part of his vision. He had turned the sound off on the machine, which would make more of a bother to keep track of as his eyes had to flick up every few seconds to check it. What a strange thing to do.

Another look showed him that the Doctor had not yet tended to himself. The wounds on his face had been wiped clean but were still exposed to the air, a good bruise had grown on one cheek, and his lip was swollen to an impressive size. He looked tired.

Next, his eyes travelled to his arm. Three separate drips had been attached to his left arm in different places—one was a clear fluid, presumably a simple saline solution, one was a slight yellow tint, and the third was a watery pink. His right forearm had been bandaged in some places and a butterfly needle had been left in, carefully taped down.

Before he knew what he was doing, his dry lips parted and spoke. "Can you hear them?"

The Doctor's eyes shot to him, then to the heart monitor, and back again. "No. I can't."

"Neither can I."

The Doctor stared at him for a very long moment, his eyes unreadable and his mind clearly at work. "I'm happy for you," he said quietly. His eyes turned back to his work and he continued, staying silent for several minutes before uttering, "Does that mean you can stop now?"

"If I say yes, will you fix me properly?"

"Not a chance." There was no humour in his voice.

"Where's your friend?"

"I took him home."

"Are we in the TARDIS then?"

"Stop talking." The Doctor refused to look up at him. "I'm trying to work."

"Why didn't you think of a failsafe?"

"I said stop talking."

"And when Rassilon was going to kill you—why didn't you, I don't know, step out of the way? Shoot him maybe? You had a gun."

"Do you want to do this yourself?" the Doctor barked angrily. "You're still bleeding, you know."

"Only because you're using primitive methods instead of some proper medical equipment."

"Maybe I would use some proper equipment if I could trust you for five seconds!"

Fair enough.

"I suppose you've had a rough day," he sighed, and earned a smile in return. A rather grim looking smile, but a smile none the less, accompanied with a quiet scoff.

"More like a rough two months."

The Doctor was a tough nut to crack but not impossible. "What did you do two months ago, fail to get yourself killed again?"

"Yes, actually." The Doctor shook his head and finished the last stitch. "I got shot by a Dalek."

"Shot by a Dalek and didn't regenerate?"

"Look, would you just shut it?"

"I just want to know how you managed it." He really was curious about that—Dalek weapons were no joke.

"It's none of your business." The Doctor snipped the thread and forcefully tossed his tools aside. "Look, we are not friends," he growled, slapping a bandage over the stitches and taping it down. "Not now. Right now, you are my patient and that's as far as it goes."

The Master narrowed his eyes, trying to steal a glance into the Doctor's mind. "And when I'm healed?"

The Doctor finished applying the bandage and stood up. "Don't pull your IVs out again, don't touch your stitches, and don't try to get up." And with that, he left the room.


	2. The Doctor

It had been four days since the fall of Rassilon and, to his great surprise, the Master had obeyed orders. He actually stayed in his little hospital bed without trying to get up, though the Doctor knew for a fact that it was terribly uncomfortable. He never touched the IV lines again, and swore that he didn't remember ripping them out the first time. He still suffered from an insatiable hunger and the Doctor had been forced to stagger out his meals into small portions every two hours so that the enormous loads of food he would devour would not interfere with his treatments.

The chemical imbalance had been easy to fix. A simple neutralizer to shut down Lucy's poison, and another concoction to finish what the ritual had started would have the Master's body settled and safe within a few more days. But what would he do with him then?

He was still unsure as to the Master's sanity. The fact that the haunting drumming turned out to be real had surprised him enough as it was—now he wasn't sure if the Master was still mad, or if he had ever been at all. He hadn't been vicious at all, and he had already shown that his mind was functioning enough to at least attempt to manipulate the Doctor, but there had been a few strange behaviours as well.

It seemed that the Master's memory of that eventful day was a little foggy, and sometimes something would come back to him. The Doctor had been changing some dressings when Master quite suddenly blurted, "I ate a human being." Then, after a minute or two of silence, cried out again, "I ate two!" He was also prone to short fits of shivers, he would repeatedly ask either where Lucy was or why she had betrayed him, and he occasionally muttered to himself.

It was entirely possible that these were simple side effects of his body settling and his physical mind re-establishing the necessary connections, but it made the Doctor worry all the same.

And if the Master got better—if his body healed and his brain returned to normal function—could he be trusted? Was it only the madness that made him a villain? Was it only the drums? If there was nothing calling him to war, would he still go?

He wanted so much to be able to trust him. He wanted his friend back. He wanted to sit and rest and not need to save the universe for just a little while. And he certainly didn't want to be the only Time Lord left. He was just so very tired. He missed Donna. He missed Rose.

The kitchen in the TARDIS, like every room it held, looked completely different than any other room you could find in it. It had basically been designed to look like an ice-cream shop from the 1950's. The floor was black and white checkered tile, the countertops and bar stools were bright red, and glass jars full of all manner of colorful snacks and sweets lined the shelves on the wall. It was a happy room, really, and it made the Doctor think of better days.

Rose had loved his kitchen. He showed off his culinary prowess with a dish of beans on toast and they sat together, just there, eating it while she giggled at him. She would cut his hair for him, sitting on the bar stool to the far left so that she could reach the jar of jelly babies on the counter and nibble on them while she worked. There was a great square, orange clock with white numbers that she insisted they get on one of their adventures, despite him telling her that there was no point when they'd have to reset it any time they went anywhere. She wanted it anyway. Every kitchen needs a clock, she said.

Now he used it to keep track of the Master's meals.

He didn't usually cook proper meals in the TARDIS but it had been necessary as long as he had an in-house patient. Leftover pork roast, mash, peas, and carrots was on the menu tonight, though the vegetables were really only there so that the Doctor could inwardly tell himself that he tried. The Master's recovering body only really craved meat and hardly touched anything else.

The Doctor carried the steaming plate from the kitchen, glancing back at Rose's orange clock on the way out, and made his way to the medical ward. When the door opened, the Master looked as though he was asleep, but a quiet murmur of "dinner, meat" told him otherwise.

"I want you to get up today," he said, putting the plate on a table in the corner, rather than the lap tray they usually used. "Your body should be well enough now to move around a bit. Come sit at the table."

The Master obeyed and carefully swung his legs over to the side. He stared into the Doctor's face for a moment, muttered "looks sick" to himself, and then tried to stand. His good leg wobbled slightly under the full weight of his body, but he managed to stay upright.

The Doctor had no crutches to offer within easy reach (he purposely kept none in the room) so he moved next to the other man to offer support.

"Thanks," the Master said, then looked into his face and muttered again. "Looks sick."

"I'm not sick."

The Master then frowned at him. "I never said you were."

Together they hobbled to the corner of the room, and the Master sat down to eagerly devour his prize of red meat. The Doctor busied himself with replacing the ever-present bags of fluid and performing a few simple tests to track progress.

The Master's hand suddenly shot to his chest and he looked down in surprise. "She shot me."

"She did," the Doctor confirmed. "But that was a long time ago. You're alright now."

"Oh." He took another mouthful of roast and glanced casually about the room. "Where is she?"

"She's dead."

"Dead?"

The Doctor nodded, watching the Master's face carefully. "Dead."

The Master took a second to absorb that, his face completely unchanging, and then took another bite. He smiled as he chewed, and his eyes wandered from one thing in the room to the next, taking in everything. He should return to himself soon. He was always a bit strange when he was hungry, but usually snapped back to normal once he was fed.

His eyes met the Doctor's just as he was using his screwdriver to check brainwaves and stared straight into them. "Looks sick."

"I'm not sick!"

He didn't know he was saying it, but he was still thinking it, and that annoyed the Doctor just as much. He was just tired. He only needed a few hours sleep to feel rested, but even that was hard to achieve when he had such a hungry patient on board.

"Let me do it myself then," the Master said, not looking up from his meal. "I can probably cook better than you anyway."

The Doctor stared at him, completely frozen, and tried to work out whether or not he had said something out loud. He was certain that he hadn't.

"That's how tired you are," the Master continued. "Your mind is like a leaky bucket. I hear you." He tapped his own forehead with one hand and continued eating with the other, speaking with a full mouth. "In here."

"Don't do that," the Doctor said with a scowl.

"I didn't do it. You did. Your face isn't healing nearly as fast as it should be and it's because your body is too tired to focus. I have food, now go to bed. Honestly, you can't call yourself a doctor if you let your own body become a total mess."

He had wanted to go to bed anyway, but his paranoid side was squirming now. Was he really in that bad of shape, or was the Master trying to get him out of the way for a while?

"Go to bed or I'm breaking your clock."

He hadn't even been thinking about the clock. For a thought like that to carelessly slip out he must have been more exhausted than he thought. What else might the Master hear?

He opened his mouth to speak, but the Master cut him off. "I won't touch my IVs. I won't touch my stitches. I'll do a little walk around the room, get straight back to bed, and not do anything else until you get up. Good night."

And with that, a little red in the face, the Doctor excused himself.

He woke up still feeling tired, but at least not nearly as much as before. He had bothered to remove his shoes, jacket, and tie before realizing that he didn't care enough about the rest and simply slumped onto the bed. He regretted that decision now that he could feel the pressure bruise growing on his thigh thanks to the screwdriver in his pocket.

The TARDIS hummed to life around him, aware now that he was awake, and he smiled. The old girl never missed a thing. She pulsed rhythmically as he slowly and almost painfully made himself sit up and began searching the floor for his shoes.

He was just planning out his next couple of hours when the TARDIS quite suddenly grew much louder, grabbing his attention. He frowned and listened to the pulse, his mind still a little foggy with sleep. Suddenly he thought of it—how long had he been asleep?

He took off at a run, abandoning his shoes on the floor. How long had it been? Four hours? Five? Had the Master's hunger driven him from bed? Was he loose in the TARDIS? His chemical drips had probably run dry. Had his pain medication worn off? Had he left anything in the room with him that he could use as a weapon?

He flew down the hallway, clearly hearing the Master's voice shouting from the medical room as he neared it.

"Bitch! Filthy, filthy! Why? It won't work. It won't!"

The door opened and he was surprised to see that the Master was still sitting in his bed. He pawed at his own chest as he shouted at some invisible person across the room, a small pile of thrown objects gathered where they were apparently standing. Suddenly he spotted the Doctor and turned to him instead.

"It won't work!" he screamed again and his skin suddenly lit up with a golden shimmer.

He was trying to regenerate.

"No, no, no! Your body's too unstable—you'll die!" The Doctor rushed across the room and grasped the Master's arm. "Don't regenerate!"

"Don't touch!" The Master suddenly slapped his hand away as his skin shimmered again. "Mustn't touch. Doctor, Doctor, Doctor says!"

The Doctor made the quick decision that talking wouldn't do him any good and launched himself towards the cabinet where he kept the sedatives instead.

The Master released a frustrated scream as he tried again. "He says, he says! Regenerate!  _Regenerate_!" His skin lit up gold, and then terrifyingly, flashed blue to reveal the bones underneath. The chemical treatment had been dry and the attempt to force a regeneration was providing enough strain to begin breaking him down again.

The Doctor ran back to the bedside, filling a syringe with something he prayed would work. He grasped the Master's arm again to access the butterfly he had attached earlier, but the Master hit him again.

"Don't touch. Don't get up!"

"Oh, shut it!" he shouted back and grabbed the arm again, surprised this time to not get hit. He shot the sedative in and watched it surge down the tiny tubing into the Master's arm. It would take a minute to take hold, so he dashed off to attach some new chemical treatment.

"Bitch!" the Master spat at the invisible person. "You know, you know! It won't work!" He continued to shout profanities and roar with rage until the sedative began to take hold. The energy seemed to rush out of him like a deflating balloon and his head rolled back onto his pillow, eyes staring up at the ceiling.

"Doctor, Doctor," he muttered now. "Doctor's crying. Funny man."

"Doctor's right here," the Doctor answered carefully, watching every movement of the other man. "Not crying."

"I didn't regenerate." His voice was very quiet now, the sedative taking over fully, and he sighed heavily.

"No, you didn't."

"It worked." His body flickered a few times, briefly turning his skin transparent before stabilizing again.

The Doctor stood and watched him for a minute or two, feeling breathless. What had he gotten himself into? He was so happy to have a distraction that he brought the Master onto his ship and revived him without a thought. He knew he would need some long-term care and he knew that there could be some far more dangerous mental problems, but he simply reasoned that he was a doctor. In fact, he was the universe's very last doctor that was educated in Time Lord biology, so who better to care for the Master than him?

But if he couldn't even get a decent amount of sleep without the Master nearly killing himself, how could he ever pull it off? He briefly considered going in search of Martha Jones for assistance—after all, she was a doctor too—but quickly decided against it. The Master knew her. He had hurt her, and her family. It was right after that terrible adventure that Martha decided to leave him. It wouldn't be fair to her to drag her back to care for the man who had given her so much pain.

Next he thought of Jack, whose familiarity with other species, knowledge of advanced technology, and, particularly, his immortality could have been remarkably useful as an assistant. Jack had proven many times that he was a good man and the Doctor knew that he would try his best to help, but his little crush on the Doctor was no secret. While he was very flattered, and might very well have considered Jack as a potential partner if he hadn't been so in love with (and later heartbroken over) Rose, focus was essential. Jack's omnisexuality could certainly be a weakness to him, and he needed someone to watch  _the Master_ _,_  not the Doctor. On top of that, his immortality let off a kind of telepathic scent that triggered every defensive natural instinct a Time Lord had. It was an irrational fear, a sense of great unease, the 'heebie-jeebies' for lack of a better word—and that wasn't particularly ideal for a patient so mentally unstable.

Sarah-Jane had her boy to take care of. He couldn't ask her to be away from him for so long, and he certainly couldn't bring a child into this mess. He also got the impression that she didn't want to go on any more adventures with him after their last goodbye.

If he still had Donna, she would do a good job of it. She'd moan a bit and make fun of him for needing her help, but she would do it and do it making absolutely certain that the Doctor knew exactly every detail of what she had done for him. It made him smile to think of the kinds of arguments she and the Master would get in—they'd be at each other's throats in seconds.

Rose would have been perfect.

He hoped that the human version of himself was taking good care of her. It had only been two months since they parted ways, but they could have done so much since then. Had they travelled? Had they moved in together? Did they have a house? Did they go out for coffee on Wednesdays and have dinner with her parents on Sundays? Did they watch the baby for Jackie? Did they think about having one of their own?

It may have only been two months but, according to their own memories and feelings, they had been falling in love with each other since that first day in London when living plastic attacked the city. What if they were getting married?

The thought left him feeling sick to his stomach. Rose loved him, he knew. She loved him so much that she was willing to throw her whole life away for him. She accepted that he would never grow old with her. She accepted that he had two hearts and that he could change his face. She accepted that she would never see her mother ever again if it meant staying with him, and she did it all so happily. Rose had known exactly who he was and loved him anyway.

Now she was with him, in a way, but he could never hold her again or speak to her. He'd never get to kiss her the way he had seen his duplicate do. He'd never see her with a beautiful, swollen belly or listen to her complain about morning sickness and back pain. She was never going to give him another haircut, or cleverly work out a life-saving puzzle, or do the worst accent imitations he'd ever heard in his long life.

He wondered if she even missed him, considering she had her own Doctor now. It was like regenerating in a way—she had the same man in a different body, and the old one was forgotten.

"Meat," the Master murmured.

Right. Food. He still had to feed his mad companion before the sedative wore off and he threw another fit. He tucked Rose gently away in the back of his mind and hurried off to the kitchen.

He only had one option left anyway.


	3. Wilfred

Wilfred Mott couldn't help but pace. He checked his watch repeatedly, constantly telling himself he had gotten the time wrong. His watch could be off by a couple of minutes. He wasn't quite sure how a time machine operated but he assumed that it would be rather precise—you pick a time and that is exactly when you arrived.

It suddenly dawned on him that the Doctor hadn't specified the exact  _space_  it would arrive in. What if began to appear on top of him? He quickly picked up his suitcase and handbag and scuttled backwards a few feet, settling right against the trunk of a nearby tree.

He had been so happy to see the Doctor at Donna's wedding, and happier still to have been asked to join him once again, that he had been too excited to really get the details. All he really knew was that it involved Harry Saxon and a little bit of medical training, but he didn't really care what it was about. He agreed to go with him before the Doctor could even finish getting the words out of his mouth.

Obviously, he couldn't just vanish at his own granddaughter's wedding, so they had arranged to meet a week later. One week, at 2:45 PM, at the park beside the church, near the pond. That was what the Doctor had said, he was sure of it.

Just as he was beginning to wonder if the park had another pond he didn't know about, he felt a stir in the air and a strange wailing sound surrounded him. He pressed against the tree, just to be safe, and watched as the blue police box appeared out of thin air. He felt a little rush of excitement bubbling up as the door opened with a creak and a familiar face appeared.

A little bit too flustered for words, Wilfred simply hurried forward with his arms held out. The Doctor gave him a good, strong hug, clapping him on the back a couple of times and asking how he was.

"We've been so happy, Doctor. That ticket you left Donna has helped her so much. My little Donna, the millionaire!" he chuckled happily, and then picked up his old leather handbag to dig through. "She was in the paper, I saved it for you. And I had Sylvia help me put together a little photo album of the wedding to take with you too. She's even got a photo of you in there! She took a picture when the two of us were talking." He pulled the items out of his bag and pushed them into the Doctor's hands. "There's a proper wedding invitation in the album addressed to you. We didn't let Donna see it—don't worry—and I would have given it to you  _before_  the wedding if I had seen you. I suppose it doesn't matter since you were there anyway. But I wanted to make sure you got one because, even if she didn't know it, Donna wanted you there."

The Doctor looked down at his hands with his mouth hanging slightly open, his eyes lit up with happiness.

"Oh, and Sylvia," Wilfred continued, fishing in his bag again. "Made these little pouches as wedding favours and told me to give you one. Bits of the confetti and chocolate or something like that. I asked what the point of giving someone used confetti was, and she said it's just something you do. So . . . there you are."

"Wilf," the Doctor stared at his gifts for another moment, a grin slowly spreading across his face. "Thank you. Thank you very much." The Doctor tucked his new possessions under his arm and reached down to pick up the suitcase on the ground.

"Oh, no, let me," Wilf began, reaching for the handle. "I brought a bit much. You see, I wasn't sure if your box here had a machine for the washing."

The Doctor smiled happily and lifted the suitcase with ease. "You should have seen Donna. She even had a hat box!"

The two pushed through the doors into that impossibly large room. The Doctor assured him that his ship was indeed equipped with a laundry machine as he led him to the doors on the other side, and stopped before they passed through.

"Of course, this is the control room. You shouldn't need to come in here much, but you can if you like. The Master, however . . . whatever you do, Wilf, do  _not_  let him in here. If he asks you to push anything, if he says it's the heating or the radio or something, just  _don't_  do it. I'd like to think he's trustworthy but I'm rarely ever that lucky."

Wilf nodded slowly. "And the Master—that's that Saxon fellow?"

"Right. That's what he calls himself."

"Just like how you call yourself the Doctor?"

"Exactly."

"Do your people have any real names?"

Surprisingly, the Doctor laughed. "Yes, we have names."

"Ah, right-o then . . . you'd think it would be less confusing for everyone to just use your proper names then, eh?"

The Doctor simply shrugged his shoulders. "You'd think," he said and then pushed open the door.

Wilfred hadn't really seen the rest of the Doctor's ship, but from the look of the hallway before him, it could have gone on forever. The hallway looked more like a metal tunnel dug by some giant animal, round and ribbed, with little bits of wall that stuck out in funny round shapes in some spots. The lights ran along the floor instead of on the ceiling and every door looked different. He saw some that looked to be made of stainless steel, and one that was the kind of foggy glass you see in a doctor's office. To the right he saw an enormous door that looked to be made of solid wood with images of leafy plants and strange fish carved delicately into it. Further on he saw a red door, and next to that was one that didn't look like a door at all, but rather like a giant egg had been rolled in to block the hole from the other side.

"Must be hell to sweep up," he chuckled, looking around in awe.

The Doctor simply smiled and carried on. He explained most of the doors as they passed—the wooden door he said was a bio-lab but then said it was more like a garden, the egg led to another hall of bedrooms (where the Doctor paused to leave Wilf's bags), a blue door was the bathroom, and the glass door was the pool.

"You mean to say you have a pool in this thing?" Wilfred demanded, sure that the Doctor was poking fun at him. "A swimming pool, or do you mean like one of those tubs for really big people?" He used his arms to show a large, invisible belly.

"No, no, it's a swimming pool."

For a moment, Wilf was astonished, but then he realized that he was in a police box that was bigger on the inside, could travel through time, and was piloted by an alien who could grow a new body if he was killed. So he decided a swimming pool wasn't quite so surprising after all.

The Doctor continued the tour, but only explained a fraction of the doors they passed. In some places the hallway would split off into different directions, and the Doctor wouldn't bother to tell him what could be found down there. He also noticed that the funny lumps that appeared to be growing out of the walls tended to have buttons on them, and some even had screens. When he asked the Doctor about them, he simply said that they were like miniature control stations and that he hardly used them.

Finally, they came to a door that appeared to be made of grey marble and the Doctor placed his hand against it.

"This is the medical room," he said quietly. "This is where I've been keeping him, but I'm going to move him to a proper bedroom today. He's in there now, resting. If he's rude, ignore him, he's just playing up."

The Doctor hesitated a moment longer, opening his mouth and stopping himself several times as if he had more to say. Eventually he just took a deep breath and, with a little shake of his head, pushed the door open.

The room wasn't quite as large as he had thought it might be, given the way the strange ship had surprised him so far. The floor, the walls, ceiling, counter tops—everything was so white it almost hurt his eyes to look at it. It was perfectly clean, and seemed to be lacking the Doctor's touch. It held no hint of him, but rather held a military like quality to it.

"So, you actually _are_ a doctor then?" Wilf asked, realizing suddenly that he had never asked. "You don't just call yourself that?"

The Doctor shot him a funny look that made him worry he'd said something offensive. "Yes, I really am a doctor," he answered slowly.

"He's a lot of things," muttered a quiet voice on the other side of the room. "But he'll never tell you what they are."

The man who called himself the Master had been sitting so still that it took a moment to locate him. He sat in one of the beds against the far wall, leaning right back, as if his spine wouldn't hold him up properly, with his head tilted back and his eyes looking down at them.

" 'Ello, Harry," Wilf said happily, taking a couple of steps forward before stopping, not quite sure how close he should get. "I'm Wilfred Mott. Doing alright?"

Harry shrugged his shoulders and looked at the Doctor with an amused smile. "I could be better, but I'm still here."

"You're always here," the Doctor grumbled. "Alright, Wilf, first things first. . ."

The Doctor continued to tell him about the chemical drips, giving a brief explanation as to what they did and why they were so important, and then he very slowly and very clearly showed him how to change the bags. Next were sedatives—the Doctor had been sure to go over his stock and re-label them with English instead of the funny circles on everything—and how to administer them. It was just as the Doctor was discussing the set meal times that Wilf let his mind wander a little, and took a good look at the Doctor's face.

It had been nearly seven months since Christmas time when the Doctor came crashing through the glass ceiling, but his face still hadn't healed. He could clearly see the bruising on his cheek which had turned an ugly yellow, and the cuts on his forehead and lip hadn't quite closed yet. He had looked exactly the same when he came to the wedding a week ago, but Wilf hadn't thought about it too much then.

"It's been eight days for us," Harry said quietly.

The Doctor's eyes shot over to him immediately. "Don't do that," he said, sounding almost angry.

"He wanted to know."

"I don't care. Don't do it."

"Well, wait a minute," Wilfred interrupted, stepping forward again. "How did he—"

"He's reading your mind," the Doctor answered, his voice still holding that angry edge as Harry rolled his eyes. "He's not supposed to do it, and he  _knows_  that."

"Can you really?" Wilfred asked, his attention fully caught now. "How can you do that?"

Harry smiled at him rather kindly. "I'm glad you asked."

"Just shut up!" the Doctor barked at him.

But he continued just the same. "It's actually a Time Lord trick. Any member of our species can do it."

"Even the Doctor?"

The Doctor released a frustrated growl and shot a very dirty look at the other Time Lord.

"Why, yes," Harry replied, still smiling and completely ignoring the Doctor's obvious anger. "The Doctor can do it too."

"Well, that's wonderful!" The Doctor and his strange life never ceased to amaze him. "Doctor, what number am I thinking of?"

"It doesn't really work like that," the Doctor muttered.

"Sure it does, Doctor!" Harry shouted gleefully. "He's just shy because he's not very good at it. See, he has to touch you before—"

"I can do it just fine, thank you. I just don't think we should go poking about in other people's heads."

Wilfred gave him a clap on the shoulder, hoping to lighten the mood a bit. "It's just a bit of fun."

A moment of awkward silence and an annoyed sigh from the Doctor later, he quickly pushed his fingers against Wilfred's forehead and announced. "Six. Happy?"

"That's marvelous!" Wilf exclaimed.

The Doctor still didn't seem very happy, and sulked a bit as he told Wilf about anything else he'd need to know. Harry sat quietly all that time, and didn't speak again until the Doctor had finished.

"Do I get a room now?" Harry asked.

For a moment the Doctor, who was clearly still annoyed, looked as if he was going to say no, but instead he gave a quick nod. His skin looked so pale and his eyes looked so dark with exhaustion, that Wilf momentarily wondered if the Doctor might actually be sick.

Quite suddenly, Harry let out a loud "ha!" but didn't offer to explain why. Well, Wilf had known he was mad already so he shouldn't really be surprised if the man did strange things. Then again, who would ever believe that Wilfred Mott was sitting in a time machine with a couple of aliens, learning how to take care of a mad old Prime Minister? Perhaps Harry Saxon wasn't the only one who was mad.

Wilfred waited in the medical room with Harry as the Doctor went to fetch a wheelchair. His new patient sat in complete silence the entire time, with a little smirk on his face, and his brown eyes studying Wilf intensely. Was he reading his mind again?

Once the wheelchair had arrived, Harry quite eagerly climbed out of bed. His movements were awkward, his good leg seemed a little shaky and he grabbed a hold of the Doctor to steady himself, but his face had lit up considerably.

"Can we pop by the kitchen?" Harry asked, tilting his head backwards so that he could look up at the Doctor. "I could use a snack."

The Doctor didn't even look back at him. "You just ate an hour ago."

"That's why I said 'snack'." He paused a moment to wait for an answer, and when he didn't get one he continued. "Come on now, Doctor. I can't very well steal the TARDIS from the kitchen, in a wheelchair, with two people watching me, can I?"

"You're not funny," the Doctor said sternly, reattaching the drip bags to the chair.

"You used to think I was funny."

"That was a long time ago."

Harry's face went from happy to sulking in a heartbeat. "Don't get all snippy with me just because _you_ waited eight days to get an assistant. It's not my fault you haven't slept. I was sick and you were just being stubborn and stupid."

"WOULD YOU JUST—" the Doctor burst out shouting and quickly stopped himself, a bit of red creeping up onto his face as he finished his sentence at a normal volume. ". . . Behave?"

"You see what he's like?" Harry asked, now reaching out and tugging on Wilf's sleeve. "A week he's been like this! It's very rude, don't you think?"

Despite himself, Wilfred let out a little chuckle. It was really terrible to see the Doctor in such a run-down state, but he had to admit that he thought that the mad, alien, ex-Prime Minister Harold Saxon was funny. He instantly regretted not suppressing the chuckle when the Doctor's exasperated eyes turned his way.

"Oh, Doctor," he began apologetically. "I really do think you'd feel better if you got some rest. You really don't seem to be yourself."

The Doctor responded with a tiny nod and began to push the wheelchair towards the door.

"And Harry, you really should behave yourself!" Wilf continued, trying to sound cross. "The poor Doctor is only in this state because he's been taking care of you, and making him feel worse is no way of giving thanks."

It was dreadfully silent on the way back down the hallway. When Wilf stole a glance at the two men beside him, they were mirror-images of each other—sulking as if they'd both just been told to go sit in the corner.

No person, no matter if they were a few decades or hundreds of years old, ever fully grows up on the inside. Wilfred had raised Sylvia, and had helped a lot with Donna, and he recognized the symptoms of misbehaving children. The Doctor was simply over-tired and therefore cranky, while Harry was simply so bored that he had difficulty controlling his own behaviour. He looked far too happy to be leaving the medical room and, whatever the Doctor's suspicions, Wilf was near certain that it was simply because he was in desperate need of something new. Then, of course, it was only a vicious circle with the two of them driving each other up the wall.

They finally came to the oddly round, white door. When they approached it properly, it rolled sideways and disappeared into the wall, revealing another hallway behind it. This hallway looked like it could have been inside a house instead of a space ship, with cozy blue carpet, wood doors, and sand coloured wallpaper with light, wavy lines. There was a little white table against one wall with a couple of books, an odd metal gadget, and a candy dish set upon it.

The Doctor pushed the wheelchair to the second door on the right and pushed it open. "This is where you'll be staying. Wilfred, there's two beds so you can bunk with him if you like, but I would strongly recommend against it." He gestured to another door a few feet further down, on the left. "That one is mine, but the rest are all free, so you can take your pick."

"Thank you, Doctor." He was about to say he'd look at the free rooms, but then he glanced at the man in the wheelchair. "I think I'll stay with Harry. Just for tonight. Get to know each other a bit better, eh?"

The Doctor looked at him as if he were thinking to argue, but was too tired to do so, and instead simply said: "You've got to be careful with him, Wilf. He's a dangerous man."

Wilfred agreed with him. He didn't know Harold Saxon very well, but he had seen the madness in him at Christmas and would not take him lightly. If he was honest with himself, he didn't really want to sleep in the same room as Harry, but he felt it was needed. When the Doctor had told him he could have his own room, he saw the smile on Harry's face disappear. The man didn't want to be alone, and Wilf could understand that.

He had very little information, but he knew enough to know that what happened at Christmas was a life changing event for both of the men before him. If they had simply been alone together since then, driving each other crazy, then they likely hadn't had anyone to talk to, to sort it out in their heads. The Doctor didn't need to talk now—he needed sleep more than anything—but he felt that the last thing Harold needed was another night of silence.

"You can stay in your own room," Harry said quietly.

"No, no," Wilf insisted. "I want to."

They were the last two of their species, he had heard them say. That meant that Harold's father was certainly gone, as well as any other members of his family. He needed some new people to help fill the holes left by them, the poor boy.

"I'm a hell of a lot older than you,  _boy_!" Harry snarled.

The Doctor gave him a quick smack upside the head and barked back. "No, that person is dead because he wouldn't regenerate. You're not even two weeks old! You're an  _infant_ , and you will show my guest some respect."

"You hit me! Look at you, getting all violent!"

"I barely touched you, and it was because I told you to keep your mind out of other people's heads!"

"Alright, good night, Doctor!" Wilf scurried forward and pushed the wheelchair through the open door. "I'll let you know if I need some help. You go get lots of rest and I'll see you in the morning. Night then!"

He shut the door before the Doctor could argue and leaned against it, letting out an enormous sigh. "You two are worse than a pair of honey badgers!"

Harry laughed heartily. "And you haven't even seen us fight."


	4. The Master

As it turned out, the Master learned that it was only mid-afternoon in Wilfred's timeline, so he would likely be awake the entire time the Doctor was gone. That was probably for the best he supposed. Having someone around who wasn't completely exhausted would give him some practice on filtering his mind, as it had been completely impossible with the Doctor simply dropping thoughts everywhere.

He hadn't told the Doctor, of course, as he didn't want to let him know just how difficult living in this body was. The Master had always been remarkably skilled when it came to the telepathic abilities of a Time Lord—he could read someone's mind from clear across the room, insert his own thoughts without touching them, and he had even transferred his consciousness to another body before. What all this meant was that his mind was stronger than most to begin with, but he was used to always fighting through the pounding in his head to get through to anything. With the beat of drums gone, it was like lifting a box you thought was full of rocks and finding that it was actually empty. Just as that box would surely go flying into the air and throw you off balance, the Master's mind was flying wildly with its new-found freedom.

He hadn't learned how to control it yet, and it was driving him just as mad as it was driving the Doctor. He didn't want to pick up every paranoid or mopey thought that popped into the Doctor's head, and worse yet, sometimes he thought of the Time War. He didn't want to see what the Doctor had seen. The Time War had proven to be too much for him—in pain, leaking raw time energy, and absolutely terrified, he had barely managed to escape and run to the farthest reaches of the universe. The Doctor had stayed until the end and seen so much more.

Just the day before, an image of the Time War had very abruptly surged into his mind. The Doctor was thinking of Kindri, a boy who had been at the academy with them. Kindri was burning. His newest regeneration was sporting black hair instead of the blond he had as a child, but it burned just the same. He screamed in agony and flailed, time energy flying as he tried to regenerate, but the undying fire simply swallowed his new body before it could finish.

That image had stuck with him the entire day, long after the Doctor had pushed it from his mind. He knew that he would carry that now and never be able to forget it. Kindri would scream and burn forever and ever in his mind.

"You play crib, Harry?"

Wilfred's voice brought him back to reality. He stood there with a pack of cards in one hand, a wooden board in the other, and a little half smile on his face.

"Something to pass the time, eh?"

The Master couldn't help but smile a little in return. "I don't think I've ever played it."

"Right then!" Wilf merrily pulled over a bedside table and dropped the board on it. "Shall I teach you the rules, or do you want to pull them out of my head with that marvelous little trick?"

"I'm not supposed to do that, remember?"

"You can if you have my permission," Wilfred replied, pulling over a little wooden chair now to sit. "Go on then."

It only took a second. Wilf had moved the rules of the game to the front of his mind like a neatly wrapped little package that just needed picking up. He captured an image of a red-haired woman in a wedding dress, but, other than that, it was clean.

Wilfred shuffled the deck and began to deal out the cards. "Your crib first, Harry."

That was starting to get a bit annoying. "You know I'm not really Harold Saxon."

"I know."

"Then why do you keep calling me that?"

Wilfred calmly looked at his cards, carefully selecting two to discard. "I don't know your real name. I'm no man's servant, so I call no man Master. If I have to call you by a false name, I'm calling you Harry."

He had to admire the nerve at least. "Fair enough."

"Then it's my turn to ask a question," Wilf continued. "Why don't you use your names? You and the Doctor both."

"Originally it was just to keep our heads down," he answered, carefully considering how much information he should give away. "We were very young, only about two hundred years old. The Doctor acquired his magnificent ship here and we decided to go travelling together. The laws of our people clearly state that we are only allowed to observe and not interfere, but the Doctor can't help but jump in and be a hero. He was breaking the law, and so decided that we should choose simple titles to prevent the Time Lords from finding us."

Wilfred nodded, but he could see some deep thoughts stirring behind those eyes. Small whispers of thought slipped into the air, silently asking more questions. He wasn't going to talk much about these things, but then he decided that they were the Doctor's secrets, not his. He had wanted someone to talk to, and, now that he had someone, he wasn't going to keep quiet. It was for the Doctor's own good anyway, he thought. It was much better that Wilfred ask him about these things than to upset the Doctor with them.

"Our kind experience time very differently than humans do," he began, shuffling the cards again for the next hand. "A human can think about an old memory and all they experience are some abstract images and sounds, maybe stir up an emotion or two. For a Time Lord, it's like living it again."

He remembered the cold smooth surface under his fingertips. The pillar felt and looked perfect, it even  _smelled_  like stone. No one could have looked at it and thought that it was anything other than a part of the Academy's architecture. The way the Doctor looked at him made his hearts beat faster and his insides bubble up with excitement. Those eyes were lit up with wonder, and the grin on his face was pure joy. The Doctor didn't even need to ask him.

Of course.  _Of course_  he would go with him.

The Master found himself smiling, and quickly corrected that. "It's almost a form of time travel, only you can't change anything. You physically feel it. Any adrenaline or endorphins you experienced at the time are released into your system again—your hearts speed up, you get goosebumps, that sort of thing."

The machine had wailed and shook when it took off, obviously being piloted by someone who had never done so before. But how they laughed! They clung to the console as it shook and laughed at each other. The Doctor even slapped at his hands, trying to make him let go so that he'd tumble to the floor, but they managed to land while they were still on their feet.

"Memories for a Time Lord can be wonderful." He thought of the Doctor bounding towards the TARDIS door that first time and throwing it open to the mysterious outside world. "But they can be terrible too. Our planet is gone now, and every other member of our race. The Doctor only ever used his name when he was at home, so that's where that name belongs. If you called him by it now, the memories would probably crush him."

The night was alive with sound and light. They walked together through a sea swimming with beings that looked just like them but didn't hold a single speck of time energy in them. There was music in the air and, in the happy chaos, the Doctor had taken hold of his hand so as not to lose him. The Doctor grabbed a man by the sleeve to ask him where they were.

"We try our hardest to forget most of the time." He stared hard into Wilfred's face as the memory stood before him. "Tell me, Wilfred . . . how long have you travelled with the Doctor?"

"I've not really travelled with him. It was just a bit of popping about London at Christmas," Wilf answered calmly. "We did go up into space for a little bit though."

The Master watched the old man before him carefully but found nothing of interest. Wilfred was busy thinking about the things he had just learned and feeling sorry for the Doctor, and no memories of other planets surfaced in his mind.

He found himself smiling again. "He'll take you somewhere wonderful some day, probably soon, as thanks for your help."

"I would like that," Wilf smiled happily. "I have to ask though, Harry . . . you said that you and the Doctor travelled together in the beginning."

"We did."

"Why did you ever stop?"

He felt the memory rushing up on him and tried to fight it down. Instead he thought of brilliant lights, and music, and explosions in the sky from a night so long ago. He remembered the squeeze of the Doctor's hand and the pain in his cheeks from being unable to stop smiling. He remembered the smell of strange foods and the face of a stranger in a swarm of aliens. He remembered being young and naive.

"He found a woman," he answered simply. "And so I decided that it would be best to part ways."

"We've all been there, mate," Wilf said with a sympathetic shake of his head. "All across the universe, there's always a woman."

They carried on with their game and Wilfred told him some stories about his life on Earth. He told him about his granddaughter, who had never been so happy as when she was travelling with the Doctor. Wilf had an admirable talent for talking about the events of last Christmas while avoiding the fact that the source of the trouble had been the Master himself.

He enjoyed having someone to talk to—particularly someone who wasn't regularly pointing out the evils he had done, or how untrustworthy he was. Wilf was good company really, but, as much as he enjoyed the conversation, it was hard to focus.

A much younger version of himself was competing for his attention. It nagged at him persistently now.  _Pay attention!_  it seemed to shout at him, as memories tried to force their way to the surface. He hadn't thought about that time for so long now, he had almost forgotten that it was ever there.

That first adventure with the Doctor, when they ran head first into a night of celebration and joy was all around, he had been so certain that it was a sign of their future. It was the beginning of a wonderful life, he had thought. His Time Lord mind could clearly see a possible future that night, and he took it for granted. Why wouldn't it happen? He had never stopped to think about the other possibilities.

When he felt the happiness of that night rising up inside, he marvelled at how he had ever forgotten it. How in the hell had he gone from that night to a day where the Doctor had a gun pointed at his head?

When he left the Doctor, he was weak. The drumming, which had always bothered him, was suddenly an unbearable curse. It drove him mad, and as the madness grew he found himself blaming the Doctor for it. It was the Doctor's fault for falling in love with some woman he barely knew and running off to marry her, his fault for deciding to have a family instead of following their plans, his fault that the Master had been left to wander alone with nothing but the incessant sound in his head. He placed such blame because he didn't know how else to handle it, and, as the anger grew, he forgot everything the Doctor had been to him in a mad desire to destroy him.

How did he forget that this was how it started? It started that night, when the Doctor held his hand and he contemplated what he should do. It started when he should have said something, said  _anything_ , but foolishly thought that there would always be more time.

As the memories rushed back, the emotions forced their way back into him. He felt ecstatic, so terribly sad, and deeply shameful all at the same time. His stomach twisted uneasily, and he silently blessed his snapped twig of a leg for saving him from the vortex.

"Oh, Harry, I'm sorry!" Wilfred's hand on his shoulder caught his attention again. "Have I said something wrong?"

For a brief moment, he was confused, until he realized how blurred his vision was. He quickly muttered something about it being nothing and wiped his eyes.

"All this talk of memories and families," Wilfred carried on. "You poor boy, I'm so thoughtless."

"No, no, it's fine," he assured him, as the other man fretted. "I just remembered something, that's all. A good thing, it was a good thing."

And so he found himself, so very suddenly, remembering. He remembered just how very much he truly loved the Doctor.


	5. The Doctor

Waking up that day felt like being born again. His clothes, the sheets, the mattress, everything had molded perfectly to his body. He had, over the course of many wonderful hours, become a living part of his own bed. He liked being a part of the bed. He spent a little more time enjoying that—somewhere between two minutes and two hours—before he disturbed the perfect form he was a part of.

Rose had never shared his bed, but sometimes when he woke up he almost expected her to be there. His arm would stretch across to the empty side of the bed, in search of someone who was never there. She should have been there, he thought. That was where she belonged.

But he mustn't think about Rose. Rose was gone, and there really was no helping it now. Even if he somehow opened another bridge and could safely bring her back, he'd only be doing her more harm than good. She was best where she was, with someone that could grow old with her. It was probably best if he just tried to forget before he let that grief sway him towards more disastrous mistakes.

A shower, a shave, and a clean suit later he emerged from his bedroom. He had enough problems already without thinking about past ones. He took a quick moment to clear his head, pushing away any thoughts that he didn't want the Master hearing, before he entered the other bedroom.

The first thing that caught his eyes was the empty wheelchair, stirring immediate thoughts of panic before he saw that the bed was occupied. Some tufts of blond hair peeked out from under the blanket along with a few toes down the other end, and the two chemical bags had been hung on the bed post. Wilfred was nowhere to be seen.

He sat down in the vacant wheelchair and observed the sleeping man. It was very easy to look vulnerable and innocent when sleeping, and he briefly wondered if that was why Lucy Saxon had waited a whole year to shoot him down. Every day the Master rose higher and hurt and killed. She would have had a chance every night to kill him, and yet she never took it.

Morality was a fickle thing. Every cell of his being told him that saving the Master was the right thing to do, but was that because it really was right, or was it because he didn't want to be the last of the Time Lords? A lonely and frightened mind is very good at fooling itself—he knew because he had done it so many times before. And he wondered now, watching the blanket move up and down slowly with each breath, if the right thing to do was to simply let him die.

What would happen when his body healed?

As if they were moving on their own, his fingers found their way to that blond hair and rested gently on the Master's head. He took a deep breath and let his mind clear, crossing a strange and dangerous bridge into the other Time Lord's dreams.

All around him he felt a pressing silence. There was no stir in the air, no brush of clothing, no sound of breath. As the world formed around him he saw the shimmer of silver above him, and a light layer of snow appeared beneath his feet. He stood in a clearing, surrounded by trees with silver leaves, glittering beautifully in moonlight. The darkness around him made it hard to see between the tree trunks to what lay beyond, and he waited a moment to see if something would appear.

There was a breeze he felt against his skin, and the branches quivered enthusiastically, but there was not a whisper to be heard. This was what the Master dreamt of now that the drums were gone—pure and absolute silence.

There would be a path somewhere, or a door of some kind, to lead him somewhere else. He was standing in a dream, but he wanted access to other areas. He wanted to review the Master's thoughts of the last few days, to see if there was a plan. Escape, kill the Doctor, steal the TARDIS, enslave humanity, anything along those lines. He wanted to know if it truly was the madness that fed the monster, or if it the beast lurked here even now.

Snowflakes were falling around him now, sticking to his clothes and melting on his skin. A change in the environment meant that the Master's consciousness was aware of the area, which meant that it might soon be aware of  _him_. He hurried into the trees and found a path quickly enough, trekking through the snow and the silence in search of an exit.

After a few moments he found an ancient looking tree of enormous size with a door in the trunk that opened before he even touched it. Inside was the console room of the TARDIS, with Wilfred standing at the controls.

The moment he stepped through the doorway he heard his foot fall against the floor, and the sounds of the TARDIS buzzing and whirring filled the air. Wilfred looked up at him and smiled.

"Back so soon, Doctor?"

"Ah, good!" another voice piped up, and Professor Yana's face appeared from the other side of the console. "I'm having some problems with the brake system, Doctor. Would you be so kind as to come have a look?"

He wasn't sure what to do. This couldn't be a memory, but a simple thought should act independently of him. The men before him were parts of the Master's imagination, but not the Master himself, and they should not interact with an outside entity.

He decided to play along and hope that he didn't draw too much attention to himself. "I just forgot my screwdriver," he said quickly, hurrying to the doors across the room. "I'll have a look as soon as I get back, Professor."

"I'll get back to work on the communications system then," Professor Yana answered happily.

"Good plan." He opened the first door he reached and stepped through, shutting it quickly behind him. He had hoped to find an empty room or a hallway of some sort that would help him navigate, but instead he came face to face with a woman.

There was no room, just a wide expanse of white nothingness with a girl simply standing there. She appeared very young, looking no more than fifteen if she were human, but the Doctor knew better just looking at her. Smooth pale skin, shining brown hair, and the tiny frame of a girl were not enough to hide her eyes. Her eyes were pale blue and looked at him with amusement, but they told him that she was ancient beyond knowing.

"We are in a pickle, aren't we?"

Very suddenly, too quickly for the Doctor to run or react, the environment changed. The Master stood beside him and the girl still stood staring at them, arms crossed with a little smug smile on her lips. Around them, in a very wide circle, were dozens of soldiers positioned in full armour with weapons pointed at them.

The Master standing next to him would be the manifestation of his consciousness. He was aware of this place now, and his dream of snow and silence had somehow become this. He did not feel a force trying to push him out though, which meant that, while the Master was aware of him, he hadn't yet figured out that he wasn't a part of the dream. If he stayed calm he might be able to blend in until the awareness moved on.

"You are very clever, Pet," the girl spoke again. "But you still owe me a debt. Now get in your chair like a good boy."

The Doctor dared to move to see what she was talking about. He leaned backwards to glance past the Master, seeing an enormous metal seat bolted to the floor. There were metal cuffs all up the arms and down the legs, with an additional one for the neck and an added leather strap to go around the forehead. He didn't even want to know what the chair was for.

"I won't," the Master replied, but his voice lacked its usual defiance.

"You will, or my men will shoot you dead where you stand."

"I won't," he repeated, a little louder this time. "Go on and shoot me then."

The girl smiled at him in a way that sent shivers down the Doctor's spine. In this place he could feel all that the Master felt, and a deep, paralyzing fear was seeping into his core. His feet felt glued to the floor and he could feel beads of sweat gathering on his forehead. The figure of the Master beside him was managing to hold his ground and face that which terrified him so, but the fear was unquestionable. Was this just the Master's imagination run wild in a nightmare? Or was this a memory?

"I still have use for you," the girl said through her smile. "I'm afraid I can't let you die just yet."

"Doctor," he heard the Master mutter. "Come on now, Doctor."

"No Doctor will be saving you today." The girl laughed at him cruelly and then turned to one of the soldiers behind her and nodded. "Shoot him."

The soldier stepped forward and removed her helmet, revealing the face of Lucy Saxon. Her golden locks seemed to move independently and her ruby lips shimmered as she raised the gun in her hand.

Suddenly the Doctor felt a hand grab his arm so tightly it hurt, fingernails digging into his skin. The Master was looking at him, right at him. His face was the absolute picture of terror, but somewhere in his eyes realization was dawning.

"Doctor?"

That wasn't absent thought. That was awareness.

Busted.

Just as the Master's face began to contort with rage a gunshot rang through the air. The Doctor felt himself get pulled rather aggressively back to reality, just in time to narrowly miss the fist flying at his face.

"You bastard! You hypocrite!"

With a quick shove of his feet, the wheelchair gave him plenty of clearance from the Master's next swing. The other man hurriedly ripped the blanket away from himself, awkwardly flailing his cast leg as he tried to reposition himself.

"Listen, I'm sorry," he began, but the Master simply shouted over him.

"How  _dare_  you! You  _deliberately_ —how  _dare_ —while I'm sleeping!"

The Master had started to sputter then, unable to even form words properly, and simply producing random syllables. They still got his message across though.

The Doctor had to push himself further away, as the Master was trying to get up. He swung his fists at him in futile attempts to make contact and, when he failed, he hurled a pillow at him instead. It took a moment or two before the Doctor realized that his patient was now hyperventilating.

"Alright, calm down!" he said with as stern a voice as he could muster, reaching out to catch a flailing fist.

"No! Don't!" the Master gasped, yanking his hand out of the Doctor's grasp and swinging at him with the other. "Don't! You! Kill you!"

"I said I was sorry! I  _am_!"

He wanted to stop the Master from getting up. The last thing he wanted now was for him to pass out while standing and subject his body to the fall. He could still feel small tendrils of connection between their minds and he felt the Master's rage, felt the lingering fear and panic—he wasn't thinking clearly. This was pure instinct.

"What have you done now?" Wilfred's exasperated voice said from somewhere behind him. "You've got him all in a panic!"

"I just wanted to check—" but he didn't get to finish the sentence. The Master's fist found him at last and struck with surprising force. It knocked the wheelchair right over and dropped him on the floor.

He watched as Wilfred hurried across the room, absolutely fearless, and sat on the bed. "It's alright, lad! In through your nose, out through your mouth, go on."

It was then that the Doctor really  _did_  feel sorry. He wasn't used to seeing the Master afraid, and he certainly never thought he would witness what he could only describe as him having a panic attack. The Master kept clutching at his chest, unable to control his breathing. He didn't push Wilf away but he wouldn't look at him either, choosing instead to keep his eyes mostly closed.

"Doctor, what is that?" Wilfred asked suddenly, sounding a little panicked himself.

The Master's skin shimmered gold before him. His survival instinct was kicking in, telling him to regenerate. He took a second to contemplate whether it was the same memory that triggered his regeneration instincts before.

"As long as he calms down, he'll be fine."

Wilfred nodded nervously and went back to instructing him on how to breathe. The Doctor sat on the floor and watched, deciding that it would probably be best for everyone if he just stayed quiet for now. It took a good ten minutes for the Master to actually slow his breathing and stop the regeneration attempts, leaving his body visibly shaking and his breath laboured.

When the Master had told him, just a few short years ago, that he ran away from the Time War because he was scared, he didn't really believe him. Everything about the tone of his voice and the choice of his words rang true, but it just seemed too bizarre a concept to fully accept. Surely the Master ran away because he wasn't interested in fighting or dying for someone else, or because he saw a better opportunity somewhere else. It didn't seem possible that the Master would run away from a battle because he was truly afraid.

But here it was now, before his very eyes. The Doctor thought of all the terrible things he had done when he was fresh from the war—how the memories plagued him and made him ruthless. If Rose hadn't come along to stitch him back together he might still be that way, or even worse. It dawned on him now that the Master had never had a Rose.

"You—" was the first word the Master spat out. "Why would—I should—"

"I'm sorry," he answered quickly. "I am so, so sorry. I really am."

"What you did," the Master gasped for air again and Wilfred gave him an encouraging pat on the back. "Is akin to rape!"

The Doctor frowned, thinking that was a bit unfair.

"Doctor!" Now Wilfred looked truly shocked. "What on Earth did you do?"

"I took a quick look into his mind while he was sleeping," he blurted out as fast as he could before he was interrupted again. "I wanted to make sure he wasn't planning anything and I shouldn't have done it and it was wrong and I'm really, very sorry!"

"Don't you ever,  _ever_  do that again!"

"I won't, I promise!"

"I should kill you," the Master snarled at him. "I should . . ." His words wandered off as his face took on a distinct shade of white.

Luckily, Wilfred had fast reflexes and scooped up a garbage bin to shove into the Master's hands just in time for him to throw up. "That a boy, Harry," the old man muttered, patting the Master's back. "Let it all out. You'll feel much better."

The Doctor felt too ashamed of himself to even touch where the Master had hit him, not wanting to look like he was feeling sorry for himself in the slightest. He scolded himself inwardly for his actions; no matter what his reasoning had been, he knew it was wrong to invade someone's mind like that. He hadn't expected consequences quite like this, but he should have known that it wouldn't be worth it.

He did feel slightly better in that he hadn't found anything to suggest sinister intentions. After this he would be expected to give the Master more leeway, and he felt more comfortable with that now. But now it would nag at him always, somewhere in his mind . . .

Who was this girl that was terrible enough to make the great Master, defier of death, run away in fear?


	6. The Master

The Master couldn't even remember the last time he'd been so embarrassed. The only thing that could have made this any worse was if he had started sobbing like a child or something ridiculous. The only thing that made him feel mildly better about it was that, after getting a scolding from Wilfred, the Doctor went off to clean out the garbage pail he had just emptied his stomach into.

He had to admit that Wilfred was beginning to impress him—he had underestimated the old man. When he was telling the Doctor off in the politest way possible, he mentioned that the Master couldn't help himself hearing other people's thoughts. He wasn't sure how Wilf had figured that out but, once he said it, the Doctor looked even more sheepish than before and volunteered to clean out the bin.

His body was still suffering some after effects and he sat on the edge of the bed, clutching a new bucket in his hands and shaking all over. He felt a bit light headed, though that was probably just from over ten minutes of incorrect breathing. Trying to regenerate probably didn't help, and he didn't imagine that throwing up did either. He declined when Wilf asked if he wanted to move into his wheelchair, certain that an attempt to stand would result in either falling down or throwing up again. He wasn't really interested in doing either.

"How do you like your tea then?" Wilf asked him as he wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. "I'll go make you a cuppa. Calm those nerves, eh?"

He didn't like the way his voice sounded when he answered, it quivered and sounded weak, but a cup of tea definitely sounded like a good idea. He thought that being left alone for a minute would be a good thing, giving him a chance to let loose any restraint, but he only found himself feeling anxious again. It was too quiet in the room alone, with nothing but the sound of his breath and his quickened heart beat pounding unnaturally loud in his ears.

He was very thankful that Wilf returned so quickly with the promised cup of tea steaming in his hands. It was funny to think that after all the years he had lived and all the things he had done, a simple nightmare would get him this worked up. The Master of the Universe, the Master of Death was sitting on his bed, wrapped up in a blanket, shaking from a bad dream, with some old grandfather fussing over him. It was really laughable now that he pictured it.

"Is that going to be my name then?" Wilfred said with an amused tone.

"What is?"

"You just called me Grandfather. I get my own title now, eh? The Doctor, the Master, and the Grandfather—I like it."

He noticed that Wilfred didn't give him the cup, but held it for him and brought it up to his mouth. It was probably best with his hands shaking so hard, but it didn't help his already wounded ego.

"I didn't call you Grandfather," he answered grumpily. "And you're the youngest person on this ship."

"Would you like to be Grandfather then? Then you can call _me_ Master." Wilfred was obviously having fun with him now, but he wasn't exactly in the mood.

"I've never been a grandfather, so no."

"Who'd have thought! I've actually done something you haven't," Wilfred chuckled happily and brought the cup up to his lips again. "Let me know if you need any tips when the time comes, eh?"

"My lovely wife shot me in the chest. I don't think we'll be having kids any time soon."

No. Something wasn't right about that thought. What had he forgotten? Ah yes, Lucy was dead.

Wilf was good at calming him down, and the tea was certainly helping. The shaking was slowly subsiding, but he still felt a bit lightheaded and his thoughts kept getting puzzled up together. He needed food, he knew, and Wilf assured him that the Doctor was making him something.

For the most part Wilfred chatted to him with silly little stories, but there were odd moments of awkward silence after which Wilf would look very sad and pat him on the back again. Once he gave the Master a hard squeeze on the shoulder and inexplicably said "you won't, son". He knew he must have been saying or doing something, but he had no idea what. He had absolutely no filter when he was hungry and apparently said or did strange things. He was very curious to know just how much slipped carelessly from his mouth, but it was too much work to focus on it.

Eventually the Doctor reappeared with a tray of food, looking thoroughly ashamed of himself. Good, he thought. How ever much time he spent with humans, the Doctor would still remember the basic rules of etiquette when it came to Time Lords. Exploring someone's mind in detail was a pretty intimate process, reserved for only the closest and most trusted of friends, family, and lovers.

He had been welcomed into the Doctor's mind once, very long ago. They weren't even a century old yet, and it was more out of curiosity than anything that they decided to share with one another. It was a strange feeling, rather like when a numbing medication is wearing off and you get all sorts of phantom sensations, but he remembered it as pleasant.

When a Time Lord shares their soul, it manifests in all senses. He remembered the Doctor's smelled like gasoline and rain, he tasted honey, saw burning stars and swirling nebulas, his skin tingled with a cold wind, he felt adrenaline and curiosity and, as ever, terrible loneliness. But it was what he heard that stuck with him the most—a song that was beautiful and haunting at the same time. It was a woman's voice even though the Doctor had no women in his life at that time, and he remembered thinking that was odd. She sang alone without words and without music, and he remembered that voice every time he saw a flicker of pain in the Doctor's eyes.

"What does that mean?" Wilfred suddenly asked.

He was aware enough to know that meant he said something, and quickly demanded to know what it was.

"You looked at me," the Doctor answered quietly. "And said 'I see you'."

"I see you standing there with my food. Are you going to give it to me or wait until I starve?"

The tray was placed on the same table they were playing crib on before and brought over. He didn't even know what he was eating, he just knew that he was absolutely famished. As he shovelled it in, a sense of normalcy began to settle over him. His head stopped swimming and his thoughts became a little clearer. There was nothing quite so comforting as knowing that your brain was functioning properly.

"Would you mind giving us a minute, Wilfred?" the Doctor said once the Master's ravenous eating began to slow down.

Wilfred glanced over at the Master, who gave him a nod of approval, before leaving with a cheerful reminder to behave themselves. The two Time Lords spent a long moment simply looking at each other, carefully choosing words and reading eyes.

"Was it real?"

"Yes," he answered quietly. "Though it was just a soldier who shot me, obviously. I keep thinking of Lucy—keep dreaming of her. I don't know why."

"What happened?"

He was uncertain here. He didn't know what the Doctor's goal was. He didn't recognize the vacant look in his eyes.

"I regenerated and then I was taken. Again. It took me five tries before I escaped properly."

"They hurt you."

That wasn't a question, so he didn't bother to answer it. The Doctor was rested now, which meant that his thoughts weren't spilling forth the way they were before. He didn't understand the angle.

"Are you okay?"

He certainly wasn't expecting that. "What?"

"I don't know what they did, but you don't scare easily, and you ran," the Doctor explained, his voice oddly calm and his eyes still holding that vacant look to them. "I was hurt too and I don't think I would be here now if I hadn't had help. You told me you were scared, and I didn't believe you. I should have. Maybe I could have helped you. So I'm asking you now, are you okay?"

"I . . ." he was about to make a smartass comment, but his lips disobeyed him. "No."

He remembered running, terrified and dying. It was his last chance and he could not get caught again. He remembered the pain of the chameleon arch, remembered spending a lifetime unable to think of anything but escaping to somewhere safe, trying to go home and finding that his entire planet was gone. He remembered watching Lucy grow cold and unresponsive, her face when she shot him, and the drumming. Oh, the drumming. The drumming had grown so much worse and fear had been his sole motivator since the war. He had never thought to stop running.

"I will make this right." The Doctor's eyes were full of determination now. "I promise you, I will do everything in my power to bring you back. You could handle it when you were with me, and I should have never let you leave. It's my fault, and I will make it right."

He meant it. If the Doctor's face hadn't been enough to make it clear, the thoughts that were escaping him were. He felt the determination and the guilt. He saw the face of a blonde girl named Rose and knew that the Doctor wasn't lying.

"I would have left anyway," he found himself saying.

"Maybe," the Doctor replied. "But I could have tried. I could have said something, done something. If I had tried, maybe none of this would have happened."

Perhaps it was only because this entire conversation seemed so surreal that he wasn't thinking properly about the consequences of his words, but whatever the reason was, the words came.

"I left because I was in love with you."

A long and uncomfortable silence followed. He wanted to look the Doctor in the eye, but every time he tried he found it unbearable. He shouldn't have said anything, he told himself, it wouldn't do either of them any good. Those words wouldn't shake the foundations of Time and fix all the mistakes he had made, it wouldn't let him say those words when it really mattered. All it could do here was make things worse.

The Doctor's eyes fixed on him and drew him into a stare. He sighed deeply as though he carried the universe's heaviest burden and replied in a barely audible whisper.

"I know."

He didn't know why that hurt so much, but it did. The words shot into him with more force than any bullet ever had and his breath escaped him. It didn't make sense for that to have surprised him, let alone hurt him, but then again it could just be further effects of his very recent trauma playing with his emotions.

The Doctor cleared his throat and stood up abruptly. "I really am sorry about what happened today. It will not happen again. You should get some rest."

And just like that, the Doctor left.

He realized now that it hurt so much because it made him remember that day. He finally came to accept that the Doctor was not going to simply get over the woman that had accompanied him. He remembered seeing him so happy and choosing not to be a part of something that could ruin that. He smiled bravely and said goodbye with cheerful words, but he had been absolutely heartbroken on that day. He felt that ache anew with the memory and wondered when exactly the Doctor learned of his wasted affections.

If he had stayed with the Doctor—if the Doctor had chosen him over that woman—where would they be now? Would the madness have been held at bay? Would he have stayed a sane and good man?

None of that mattered really. In the end, the result was the same.

He had become a beast twisted by fate and fuelled with hatred. He had destroyed worlds and civilizations and he hadn't so much as blinked. It was his actions that mattered, and the past was nothing more than a sad story. Nothing was fixed or forgiven with the knowledge that a monster was born of a broken heart.

He wasn't sure exactly when Wilf had come back into the room, he was so wrapped up in his own mind. But as his consciousness explored his memories for all the almosts and what-ifs he was vaguely aware of the old man's eyes looking at him, and of worn hands touching him.

The whole world moved as he was gently made to lie down on his bed. He was surrounded in warmth and softness as the blankets carefully engulfed him in a safe cocoon. As his mind drifted to the silver woods on his father's estate, warm and comforting fingers touched his forehead and ruffled through his hair.

Someone other than himself used his voice to speak. "Thank you."

The voice that answered was so distant and muffled that he didn't understand it, but the tone told him it was probably something nice. A light somewhere in the world went out but, in the darkness, his forest thrived.

He breathed deep—deeper than he had ever bothered to before—and let the forest swallow him up. In the dark, with the cold chill of snow, the soft glimmer of silver leaves, and the reassuring silence, he embraced that which had eluded him his whole life. Even if it was just the shortest of moments, no words could describe the beauty of such a state.

Peace.


	7. Wilfred

While Harry slept, the Doctor took Wilfred to the ship's library for a few lessons. It looked like the kind of library that would belong to the Queen, with dark wood panelling and plush, ornate furniture. Most of the walls were simply lined with book shelves, and the ones that weren't had some of the most beautiful paintings and tapestries he had ever seen. An enormous desk sat in the center of the room, stacks of books piled on top of it, some notebooks laying open beside them with pages covered in strange circular patterns.

While the Doctor headed straight for the endless supply of books, Wilfred studied some of the wondrous objects on display. There was a stone carving of a man wrestling what resembled a lion but had an unusually long neck and a series of spikes down its back. A tapestry hung depicting a lone winged red horse charging at an army of shadowy shapes wielding swords. He found a delicate silver frame that held a round glass casing, within which was a strange but beautiful image—an incredible explosion of reds, blues, and yellows, all letting off so much light it was difficult to look straight at it.

"Quite the reading light you've got here, Doctor."

The Doctor glanced back, a book in each hand. "It's a star going supernova—frozen in time and placed under one of the most powerful compression fields in the universe. That was a gift, actually."

"Ah," was all Wilf had to say.

Next, he found a globe for a planet that was definitely not Earth that slowly rotated on its own, and a painting of a beautiful woman in a green dress with strangely textured brown skin, no ears, and what looked like flowers sprouting from the top of her head. He swore he saw something move when he passed by an enormous mirror with a golden frame but saw nothing when he looked again. Finally, he came to an ebony life-sized statue of a man.

There was something a little odd about the statue that he couldn't quite put his finger on so he stopped to look at it closer. After a moment, he realized that the chest was moving ever so slightly, as if it were breathing.

"Doctor, this statue," Wilf began and touched a finger to its arm. Suddenly the entire thing dissolved into a cloud of dust and vanished before his eyes, causing him to cry out in surprise.

The Doctor's head whipped around. "What happened?"

"I don't know! Oh, I must have broken it—It just disappeared!"

"Oh! No, that's just Boris," the Doctor answered, and turned back to his books. "Well, I called them that once as a joke but they liked the idea of being a single entity so now I always call them Boris. You just disrupted structural communication, that's all. He'll come back."

"But what is it? Where did it go?" Wilfred asked, his eyes darting around the room in search of the missing statue.

"It's a swarm of particle-like life forms, known as the Vashta Mereen. They've got some nasty cousins, but this species is friendly. Right now they are all around you, scattered about the room, but you'll see them again once they reform."

"Any other living things on the ship I should know about?" he asked a bit nervously.

The Doctor grabbed one last book before walking back in his direction, a big grin on his face. "Hundreds."

That made him even more nervous but he decided not to think about it too much. "As long as you keep them all fed and watered."

The Doctor dropped his books on the desk with a loud thud before opening one of its drawers to search through. "These will be the most useful to you but the TARDIS won't translate them. You'll have to wear these." He pulled out a pair of glasses with a golden frame and lenses that were tinted slightly orange.

Wilf looked at the books gathered for him and saw the same circular patterns that were in the notebooks. "You mean that this is writing?"

The Doctor nodded. "Gallifreyan. The TARDIS doesn't translate because it's our natural language."

Wilfred slipped the glasses on and looked at the books again. The circular shapes immediately changed to letters, revealing  _Time Lord Biology Fourth Edition_ ,  _Jirana's Medical Case Studies – Regenerations and Other Consciousness Transfers_ , and  _Master of Death – A Psychiatric Study_.

He pointed to the last one. "Is this one actually about Harry?"

"He's made quite the impression over the years."

"So have you," Wilf protested. "Have you got a book?"

"That one will help you understand the Master's mental illness while the others focus on the physical," the Doctor continued as though Wilf hadn't spoken. "It's a lot to go through and there will be a lot of things you might not understand, but you can ask me if you get stuck. I'll mark the chapters that will be the most relevant."

Wilfred sat down in the throne-like chair next to the desk as the Doctor skimmed through the books and began sticking Post-It notes on certain pages. He glanced at the open notebooks on the desk, looking at the circular writing curiously before slipping the glasses on and watching them change magically before him. It didn't do him much good though, the notebook was filled with mostly measurements and observations for some very complicated sounding machine. A Post-It note stuck to the desk itself simply said "March 24, '03, 1 AM. Bring the pendant". He wondered if these mysteries were the sorts of things he would see if he were able to look inside the Doctor's mind.

"Did you at least learn anything?"

The Doctor didn't even look up from the book. "Only that I underestimated what war can do to a man."

"Did his wife really shoot him?"

"Yes," the word came out in a whisper. "And he died."

"What happened to her?"

"She died too. But, through the magic of science and some brilliant con work, the Master managed to drag himself back out of the ashes." He looked directly into Wilf's eyes now, a furrow between his brows. "I know you like him, and you're right to think that he's been through tragedy, but don't underestimate him, Wilfred. You saw what he did at Christmas, and I've seen him do so much worse. He is extremely dangerous and one of his specialties is tricking people into trusting him."

"I saw him save your life at Christmas, and mine."

"He's the one who put us in danger in the first place!"

"You saw him as well as I did, Doctor," Wilfred answered sternly. "He wasn't right then. He was very sick, and it seemed to me that he just wanted to go home. We've all done foolish things when we were scared or lonely, and don't you tell me you're any different."

The Doctor took a deep breath, putting the book in his hands down and taking a moment to think. "I know he was sick. All I'm saying is that we have to be careful. It's still possible that that's just who he is, with or without the drums."

"Okay," Wilf agreed quietly. "I can understand that. I also think that we can be careful without being cold. A man in his condition won't get any better if he feels imprisoned."

The Doctor's eyes widened slightly at that. "No. No, you're right."

"We can be careful and still be his friends. I think that's all the poor lad needs, really."

The Doctor smiled in amusement. "That's a big risk."

Wilfred smiled back. "The most important things always are."

A moment of silence followed, but Wilf was relieved to see that the Doctor was at least smiling. It was then that he noticed a large shadow behind the Doctor moving independently.

"Hello, Boris," he said as merrily as he could, trying to hide the uneasy feeling the strange being gave him. "Sorry I startled you earlier."

The dark shape nodded its head and gave a little wave of its hand in greeting. The wave was slightly too fast and his hand and arm blurred before him the same way a moving object would in a photograph. It seemed that Boris had to move far slower than a person would or his shape didn't quite hold together.

"He's just happy to meet someone new," the Doctor explained. "Boris has lived in my library for nearly three hundred years now. It's not often he meets new people."

Boris nodded again, and the strange black face shifted in such a way that it looked as though it were meant to mimic a smile. The whole form looked strange and slightly out of focus, but he supposed that made sense if it wasn't a solid object. Boris gave him the willies really, but he tried not to let that show. If the Doctor was being serious about there being hundreds of other life forms on his ship, he was sure to see stranger than this.

"Maybe he'd like to meet Harry?"

The Doctor frowned slightly. "Maybe."

"They might get along, you know. Boris is a swarm who likes to be one being, and Harry is one being who tried to be a swarm. He managed six billion—is that more than you, Boris?"

Boris smiled again and shook his head, blurring slightly as he did so. The Doctor pulled another chair out from the desk so that Boris could very slowly and carefully sit down in it, and then started gathering up the many notebooks he'd left open on the desk. Did sitting down actually act as any form of rest for the swarm, or was it simply something they did to blend in?

"Can we give him something to do?"

"Boris?"

"Harry," Wilf answered. "I think he could behave himself better if he had something to do."

The Doctor took his time answering, carefully putting away his notebooks as he thought it over. "He's still very sick, and injured besides. We can give him some books."

"Books are good," Wilfred continued carefully. "But I was thinking of something a little more stimulating. Something to put a little energy into?"

"Wilfred—"

"I don't mean all day," Wilf sputtered out quickly. "Just an hour, or half an hour even! It can't hurt him if it's just a little bit, and I think it would do him some real good to have something to look forward to in a day."

Boris nodded in agreement.

The Doctor sighed. "And what would you suggest?"

"He said the two of you travelled together for a while. What did he do then?"

The Doctor closed his eyes and rubbed his face with his hands, clearly stressed out at just the thought, but he answered anyway. "He created the Bio Lab. That was his project."

"Then can't he work in there?"

There was another long moment of consideration during which the Doctor chewed on his thumb nervously. Finally, with another sigh of frustration, he said, "I will make sure it has the proper tools in it, so no matter what he says  _do not_  bring in anything else from any other part of the ship. Not so much as a paper clip! Especially not paperclips."

"Of course."

"I will supervise the first visits. If I say it's not safe, we pull the plug with no arguments. And under no circumstances is anything  _ever_  allowed to leave the lab."

"Absolutely."

"And for your own safety, don't handle anything. Even if he's holding it himself, do not touch it unless I specifically say it's safe."

Wilfred chuckled nervously. "What would I be handling anyway? I'm not exactly a scientist."

"It's plants mostly—flowers and fruits. Some animals too. I'm not really sure what's in there now; I haven't been in there in about forty years."

"Then won't it all be dead?"

The Doctor chuckled at that. "No, it's designed to just keep growing new life no matter what. I should clarify, I call it a bio lab, but it's more of a  _creation_  lab." He picked a delicate looking, scythe shaped silver tool off a bookshelf and twirled it idly between his hands. "When we began travelling, I called myself the Doctor because I was a doctor of astrophysics, and later of medicine. He called himself the Master because he was a master of terraforming. It's taken on a whole different meaning now, but originally people just called him Master out of respect for his field of work."

"Isn't terraforming working with a planet?"

"Usually, yes, or sometimes just an area where life has been wiped out by some disaster or another. But you still need to build the engine, and he decided he would build one on the TARDIS. The Bio Lab has been running itself for hundreds of years, but I'm sure it would appreciate a tune up."

"Well, either way, it sounds wonderful. I think it will make Harry very happy."

The Doctor looked doubtful but nodded anyway. "We should really get to work if we want to get anything done before he wakes up." He tapped the little silver scythe on his chin a few times. "And unfortunately, those books are a bit out of date, so they can't tell you everything. In order for you to understand the chemical instability he's currently faced with, you need to understand a whole lot of other things."

"Does it involve knowing the part about the magic of science and the brilliant con work?"

"Yes."

"Oh good, because that sounded like a good story."

Wilfred beamed from ear to ear, which Boris then mimicked, and the Doctor appeared to melt before him and smiled back. He knew that the Doctor had faced nothing short of Hell recently, but Wilf was determined now that the worst should be over.


	8. The Master

The next two days meant playing an awful lot of crib. They managed to get the Doctor to play with them a couple of times, but it was usually just the two of them. That was okay. Wilfred was good company and gave the Master an opportunity to hone his mental skills again.

The Doctor had been surprisingly absent since Wilfred's arrival and, even when he was present, he was unusually quiet. He wasn't sure if it was because he was still embarrassed about the whole mind reading incident, because of the Master’s own sudden confession, or if the Doctor was simply avoiding him out of habit. Whatever the reason, it was annoying.

When he was with Wilfred, they played cards and spoke of old days—though Wilfred's 'old days' weren't very old at all. When Wilf went to bed, the Doctor made an appearance every couple of hours to ensure he was cared for, would barely say a word to him, and then disappear again.

Once, he decided to follow the Doctor and find out just what was keeping him so busy. He wheeled along down the hallway, checking every door he passed, until he found the Doctor sitting alone in what looked like a storage room. He sat in a very old Hahdonii style chair with his head back and eyes closed, his trusty screwdriver sitting loosely in his hand.

"You'd rather spend your time with dust than talk to me?"

The Doctor answered with a rather cruel 'yes'.

Wilf had brought him some books, and that helped to pass the time. The Doctor must have helped him pick them out, because they just happened to be ones he hadn't read and had all the right content. At least the Doctor was thinking about him in some way.

By the end of the second day of near silence from the Doctor, he began to feel a bit paranoid. Had he done something wrong? Had the Doctor seen something in his mind?

Wilfred was sleeping, which meant the Doctor had to come in to care for him. Other than the basic questions, he still had nothing to say.

"I don't know why you're ignoring me like this," he huffed unhappily as the Doctor worked. "I didn't do anything wrong. It was  _you_  who went picking in  _my_  brain uninvited. What can you possibly be mad at me for now?"

"I never said I was angry," was the Doctor's infuriating answer.

"It's because of what I said then?" he blurted out, to his own annoyance. "Really, you should just take it as a compliment!"

The Doctor remained quiet at that and carried on with his tasks.

"Can you just talk to me? I don't like this. It's too quiet here. Why won't you talk to me?"

"I don't really have anything to say to you."

"Look, I said I  _was_  in love with you. That doesn't mean I still am. You're too skinny now. Get over yourself."

He had meant it as a joke, but the Doctor was not amused. He, again, chose to stay silent.

"You're too quiet. The ship's too quiet. You have to talk to me, Doctor. Just talk!"

It was only the look in the Doctor's eyes that made him realize what had happened. His face was surprisingly calm, but his eyes showed a strange mix of fear and disappointment. His wrist actually ached from the force with which the Doctor had caught it, stopping the blow that he was unknowingly about to deliver.

He didn't remember raising his hand and he didn't understand why he had gotten upset so quickly.

"Don't do that," the Doctor said quietly, calmly.

"I didn't mean to," he answered, surprised to hear that old quiver in his voice. "I don't know how I—"

"Not that," the Doctor interrupted. "This."

The Doctor drew his attention to his own hand, the Doctor's fingers still tightly bound around the wrist, as his skin lit up with gold. He was trying to regenerate apparently. His heart rate was up, and he felt sweat gathering on his forehead. He didn't want to regenerate. Why was that happening?

He could feel a sense of panic trying to break through the surface of his mind and he struggled to keep it back. He had thought he was calm just a moment ago. He was just trying to break the Doctor's icy exterior with a simple joke, then he blinked and it was like being shoved into someone else's body. Someone who was frightened.

His skin lit up again, much brighter this time. He was vaguely aware of his mouth moving and his vocal cords vibrating, but he had no idea what he said. He didn't want to regenerate. He didn't want to regenerate.

He didn't want to.

The Doctor's fingers landed lightly on his forehead. "Will you let me help you?"

He wasn't sure if the words he was thinking were coming out properly. The connection between his mind and his mouth seemed to short circuiting, so he gave a vigorous nod instead.

He immediately felt a cooling sensation spread through his body, followed by something warm. He felt the Doctor in his mind, as calm as a slow river, drifting from one area to the next. He felt those fingers gently push back the sense of panic and close the door behind it, and then begin sweeping up some of the lingering chaos. Lucy and her smoking gun were tucked away somewhere out of sight, and ancient voices were ushered into their own quiet corners.

The Doctor was careful to withdraw slowly so that he wasn't hit with the sickening shock of reality, the way he was just a few nights before. When he opened his eyes, the Doctor was studying him very intently and the fear in his eyes had changed to sadness.

"I didn't mean to hit you." The words seemed to come out properly this time.

"You didn't."

"Well, I didn't mean to try."

He could easily see the purple tint to the Doctor's jaw, showing where he had hit him the other night. Of course, the Doctor had deserved that one, but it made him wonder if his beat up face would ever have a chance to heal up properly again. The majority of his Christmas injuries were gone now, but the cut on his lip was remaining stubbornly.

Aggression, he was used to. Violence, he was familiar with. He had never really been a gentle man, but he was not used to being surprised by his own actions. He had never woken up one day and realized he had hurt someone, or felt words coming out of him with no idea what they were. What was happening to him?

As he looked at the Doctor's wonderfully brown and expressive eyes, crouched before his wheelchair and full of concern, he wasn't sure what to think. He was grateful to the Doctor, and sad that he didn't trust him. He didn't know why the Doctor had been ignoring him, but he knew for sure now that it wasn't out of anger. Why did he look so sad?

The Doctor's fingers were still on his face, but he felt no lingering connection of their minds. He found himself moving without realizing it again, and he found his own fingers had moved to the Doctor's cheek in turn. They looked at each other for a moment, and he thought that they had reached some silent understanding. . .

But, when he kissed him, the Doctor certainly seemed surprised.

The other Time Lord took in a sharp breath through his nose, and his entire body tensed up, but at least he didn't move away. It was gentle and simple—one set of lips pressing against another, without any complicated business. It was funny to think of how something so simple could elicit such a response from a being that was far too old to get all aflutter over it.

Then, as suddenly as it happened, the Doctor pulled away from him. "Please don't," he muttered, standing up and taking a step away from the wheelchair.

"I lied earlier." He was surprised to feel himself grinning as he said it.

"I can see that." The Doctor crossed his arms and backed up further.

"I'm okay now."

"Right."

"Oh, come on. It's not so bad," he said in a teasing tone. "I'm sure you kiss all your companions."

"Actually, they tend to kiss me, thank you."

"I'm just following with tradition then."

The look the Doctor shot him was one of pure annoyance. "Alright, you've had your fun. I've got things to do now, if you don't mind."

He sat with a rather smug satisfaction as he watched the Doctor squirm uncomfortably before him. He gave the wheelchair a wide berth as he walked past it to the exit, and walked a little too stiffly for someone who was pretending not to be bothered.

He waited until he heard the door open to shout out. "Your lips are dry. Drink more water!"

When he heard the door close he slumped back in his chair and sighed. He felt so tired now, and his body ached a bit from its attempt to regenerate. It made him chuckle to think of the embarrassed look on the Doctor's face and a part of him couldn't believe that he had actually kissed him. No harm done though, he thought. If the Doctor still seemed bothered by it later, he could just apologize and say he misread the body language. It was all simple, really.

When the Doctor returned two hours later, he was a significantly friendlier. He made a point to make conversation, even if it was just small talk, but he was also careful to keep his distance. The Master wondered if that was because he was afraid of being hit again or afraid of being kissed again, but decided it was probably best not to ask.

With a fresh supply of chemical treatment, a few more stitches finally removed, and a meal set in place, it had reached the point where the Doctor usually took his leave. Instead he sat down on the vacant bed.

"We need to talk."

Here it comes.

"Okay." He turned his chair a bit so that he was facing the Doctor properly.

"I need you to listen to what I have to say. I don't want you interrupting or making fun of me. I want you to listen, wait your turn to speak, and have a proper discussion, alright?"

Uh-oh.

"Alright."

"I don't know how serious you were being, or if you were just having a laugh, but I don't . . .  _that_  just can't happen. It's too complicated, and I can't do complicated right now. This whole thing is confusing and stressful enough as it is without throwing those kinds of feelings in there. You've got so many things going on in your head that I don't think you should even be considering that kind of thing anyway."

He waited for a moment before answering, trying to be sure that it was his turn to talk as he had agreed, despite his annoyance at the last comment. "While your concern is touching, Doctor, I am hardly a child. My mind is perfectly capable of thinking of multiple things at once, even complicated things. It was a simple mistake—I was confused and misread the situation and that's all. It won't happen again."

The Doctor was trying hard to shield his mind, but his thoughts were just too easy to hear. He was heartsick and scared of more loss. He could hear the whispers of distrust whizzing about the Doctor's head like little demons.

"I know there's been a lot of tension between us," the Doctor began again. "And I know that most of it is my fault these last few days. But you have to understand that this isn't easy for me either. A couple weeks ago you were taking over the planet and had me strapped to a board, not knowing what you would do. And the time before that . . . it's hard to be around you and feel easy—I'm on high alert, I'm defensive. Do you understand?"

He nodded slowly, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable with himself.

"I promised I would help you, and I intend to. I will learn how to spend time with you again, and I will learn to talk to you. I think the fastest way to achieve that is if we understand that this is hard on both of us, and we have to be considerate of each other."

He nodded again. "I can do that."

"Sometimes, I need to be away from you. Sometimes, I need to be able to be in the same room without being pushed. And sometimes, I just need you to recognize that I'm uncomfortable."

The Doctor looked at him now, quietly waiting, and he realized he was supposed to speak again.

"I need you to talk to me," he said with barely a second thought. "Not always. Not when you can't. But I can't be ignored all the time—it's too damn quiet everywhere. I need to think about some things that don't matter, like crib, or people I've never met, or what kind of food they eat on the Centauri Satellite. Just talk to me, once in a while."

The Doctor smiled a little and held out his hand. "It's a deal."

"A deal," he agreed, and shook on it. Once upon a time, the Doctor wouldn't even shake his hand, so he supposed that could be something to be happy about.

"Right then," the Doctor shifted about and ran his fingers through his hair quickly, his way of shifting gears from serious to normal once again. "I had a chat with the Wilfred the other day, and I've been thinking quite a lot about it. After today I think it's obvious that your mind isn't handling being idle very well. Wilfred suggested that you need something to do."

"Oh, yes. Yes, please." That sounded like the best news he'd heard all day.

"For an hour a day, you can work in the lab."

"Which lab?"

"Yours."

" _My_  lab? It's still here?"

The Doctor frowned at him. "Of course it's still here! Where would it go?"

"I don't know. It's been so long and the TARDIS has changed so much, I just assumed it was gone." He was suddenly filled with an intense desire to see that which he thought was lost with everything else. "When can I go?"

"When Wilf gets up," the Doctor answered, smiling kindly now. "He wanted to see it too. But there are some rules, and if you break any of them the whole thing stops and you go back to crib and books. Got it?"

"Yes, of course. I'll need crutches. I can't take the chair in there." He could feel his face spreading into a grin. "What kind of time stream has it been set at?"

"A million years to one. I had a peek in there the other day, and it's all very big."

All those life forms! Persistent life, created by his own hands, growing and evolving for hundreds of millions of years all on its own! For the first time in what seemed like forever, he felt perfectly giddy. He would absolutely need to repay Wilfred for this.

The Doctor suddenly chuckled quite happily. "Eat your dinner. You're talking funny again."


	9. Wilfred

When Wilfred opened his eyes, the first thing he heard was the Doctor's voice shouting. He'd never known two grown men who squabbled so much.

"You would think that in the several hundred years they've lived, they might have grown up a bit," he grumbled to himself.

His old bones creaked and groaned in complaint as he sat up and rubbed his eyes. They must have been fighting in the main hallway because their voices were far too muffled for him to make out what they were saying. Maybe that had been their attempt to avoid waking him up, and he supposed he should at least be grateful for that.

With his slippers located and put on, he got up to go break up the fight. When he left his bedroom and followed the noise, it became clear that he was right when he heard the voices coming from the other shape of the egg-like door.

"How did you even—? You put it back!" The Doctor's exasperated voice barked.

"I told you not to push it!"

With some slight hesitation, Wilf opened the door. As it slid aside he had just enough time to glimpse Harry's blond head whizz by at a completely impossible speed, the wheels of his chair screaming in protest.

"If you break your other damn leg, I'm not fixing it!"

"What's going on out here?" Wilf asked. The Doctor was a little ways up the hall, in the direction Harry had just come from, bizarrely clinging to one of the knobbly protrusions on the wall that acted as a control station.

"Wilfred! Stay there!" The Doctor scrambled to hold on to the controls, his whole body moving as if some invisible force were trying to pull him. "Don't step through the doorway!"

Suddenly there was a loud clanking sound and the Doctor's body whipped around the other way instead, almost making him lose his grip. The sound of Harry's wheelchair squealing returned and Wilfred looked down the hall to see him speeding back to them.

"What in the seven Hells did you do?" he called out to the approaching figure.

The clanking returned again, filling the air several times now. Harry's chair slowed down very quickly, and the Doctor's body straightened out a bit, then pulled to the other side again, but only slightly this time. As the wheelchair came to a calm and leisurely stop right in front of the control station, the Doctor regained his feet and stood up properly to straighten out his jacket.

"What was that?" Wilfred asked again. "What did you do?"

"He  _hacked_  my TARDIS!"

"It's hardly hacking if you haven't changed the password since the last time I stole it," Harry answered with a roll of his eyes. "Honestly, it's embarrassing. And you wouldn't have even known I'd done anything if you had just left the console alone. I did this yesterday and nobody noticed."

Wilf carefully stepped through the doorway into the hall, pausing to make sure that nothing strange happened, and then proceeded to the console. "What exactly happened?"

"Simple really," Harry began, spinning his chair around in circles. "I altered the gravity field for the hallway and set it to a repeat program. It goes back and forth three times before returning to normal without affecting the rest of the ship. I just wanted to feel a little wind on my face and he says I'm not allowed outside, so what else am I supposed to do?"

"What's to stop you from smashing into something when you get to the end of the hall?"

"Timing and basic physics, Grandfather," he answered in a cheerful, but cocky voice. "I'll teach you some day, eh?"

"You're changing the programming of my ship!" the Doctor cried out. "And what if you didn't go straight and hit a wall? Going at that speed, you'd break all your ribs if not worse! And what if Wilfred had stepped into the hallway?"

"I didn't say it was a  _good_  idea, but it wouldn't have happened if you had let me explain what the program was before you just activated it. I wasn't planning to use it unless I knew you'd both be busy somewhere."

"What else did you change?"

"Nothing! I just did it for a bit of fun, that's all."

The Doctor glared at him for a long minute. "Why should I believe you?"

Harry took a deep breath and rattled off his explanation as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "I could have opened the door to the control room and simply left. I could have locked the doors to the rooms you were in and then shut of the oxygen and suffocated you, or shut off the heat and let you freeze to death, or let you starve. I could have imprisoned you and sold you to one of your many enemies for a big, fat reward. I could have jettisoned the rooms and let you drift in space to die in whatever way comes first, or sent you towards a sun to burn up. Oh, the things I could have done, Doctor."

Wilf glanced at the Doctor and noticed that he was a few shades paler than he was a moment ago. "Harry . . ."

"Those things would be far simpler, faster, and cleaner than some mad plan to slowly reprogram and take over the ship. Five minutes versus five weeks, and without having to worry about getting caught or dealing with surprises. Now why do you think I chose not to do any of those things?"

The Doctor swallowed hard and spoke in a tiny, awkward whisper of a voice. "I don't know."

"Because we're friends," Harry announced proudly. "Or at least we will be, eventually. I did this for fun. You weren't supposed to see it, I was going to erase it once I'd had a ride or two, and it's the only thing I've done to your ship. But, seriously, change your password."

"Well, uh, no harm, no foul. Right, Doctor?" Wilf said hopefully, clapping the pale Doctor on the shoulder. "This is just the product of a spot of boredom. Easily fixed."

"Right," the Doctor answered slowly. "I suppose that's true."

"Can we go to the lab now?" Harry asked.

To Wilf's great surprise, the Doctor nodded slowly. "Let's . . . head to the Bio Lab, shall we?"

"Excellent."

A few minutes later, Wilf met up with them in the hallway again, having traded his pajamas and slippers for some proper clothes. He was surprised to see that the gravity incident hadn't sparked a massive argument between the two Time Lords and that they were choosing to wait quietly with each other instead.

The Doctor still looked quite pale and maybe even a little sick, but Wilf supposed that he might not being feeling so well either if gravity had suddenly decided to spin about on him. Harry stood quite happily, tapping a little beat on the floor with his newly acquired crutches and his chemical bags surprisingly absent.

He raised an eyebrow at the sight of them. "You two sorted it out already?"

"We had a chat earlier," Harry answered, while the Doctor cleared his throat. "We're attempting a sort of peace treaty."

"Marvelous!" Wilf exclaimed happily. "Glad to hear it. It'll be good to go ten minutes without you at each other's throats."

Harry grinned and the Doctor gave a weak smile. Wilf commented on how ill he looked and he answered that his breakfast simply wasn't agreeing with the unexpected gravity shifts. Soon enough they were stood outside the large, carved wooden door and Harry seemed barely able to contain his excitement.

"Make sure you align the time streams properly," he fretted, as the Doctor pushed a series of buttons on a tiny panel on the wall. "Is the decontamination chamber still functional? You have been maintaining it, haven't you?"

"It's all fine," the Doctor answered, coughing a bit as the panel beeped merrily and the door began to move.

"Eyes and mouth closed, Grandfather," Harry said, as they passed through the doorway.

It was just a short, white hall with another door at the end. He closed his eyes and mouth when he saw the other two do it and the room began to hiss viciously. He felt a light breeze and a cool mist against his skin before the hissing sound stopped.

The Doctor coughing cued him that it was okay to open his eyes again, just as Harry asked, "Why do you keep coughing?"

"Something's stuck in my throat," the Doctor answered, attempting to clear it again. "I'm fine."

The doors before them slid open and revealed an entire jungle before them. The lab was impossibly huge, stretching so far and so high that Wilfred couldn't tell where it ended. The ground was covered in some strange, pale blue fuzz that felt remarkably soft under his shoes. The majority of the trees were oddly shaped in that the base of the trunk was absurdly wide compared to the rest of the tree. It thinned out about four feet up in a shape that made it look like a squat bottle with a long neck, the thin part of the tree also having a strange ribbed shape all the way up its bark. The tops of the trees held branches that looked more like long and flexible stems, rather like a weeping willow tree, with wide, spade-shaped leaves attached all the way along it.

"That," Harry began, pointing at the strange trees before them. "Is entirely your fault. Your poor piloting skills have affected the evolution process of my trees!"

"They've adapted to their environment, just like they're supposed to," the Doctor answered. "It's impressive if you think about it."

"Let's get some kits. I need to collect samples," Harry began to lead them towards a glass dome positioned just to the left of the entrance. "Lots of samples!"

Wilf followed, with the Doctor behind him, and looked about in wonder. He noticed a set of pink eyes watching them from under the roots of an old tree, and a flicker of movement behind the trunk of another. If he had understood the Doctor correctly, this lab was the only place in the entire universe where you would find these creatures. Every speck of life inside was born and grown there, beginning with just a few basic molecules and what he called the 'spark of life'. He might be the only human to ever lay eyes on them, and so he made a point to notice as many details as he could.

The Doctor was coughing again, quite a bit harder this time, but still insisted that he simply had something caught in his throat.

"Here, get inside," Harry said, opening the door to the glass dome. "We don't want you coughing and introducing more foreign germs to the environment. Have some water or something."

The observation area inside the dome was not as big as Wilf might have thought, given the way the TARDIS usually surprised him. It was likely no bigger than a thousand square feet, and most of it was packed with computers and equipment. In the center was a large table with a set of large lights positioned above it—the only clear surface in the room. Countertops lined the glass wall that looked out at the jungle, covered in books and pages of circular patterns that he assumed must be notes. There were jars of pickled specimens, mostly plant life and a few small creatures that looked a bit like frogs with spider legs. Lockers, filing cabinets, and plenty of bizarre looking machines filled most of the other space. He only saw one door other than the entrance, and assumed it must have been a bathroom.

"You said this has been going faster in time, yeah? Millions of years," Wilf began, picking up a piece of paper with a detailed drawing of one of the frog creatures cut open. "Why hasn't this all rotted?"

"The observation dome has its own separate time stream," Harry replied, setting his crutches aside and hopping on one foot to navigate the room. "When we aren't inside, the TARDIS puts it in a time stream so slow it may as well not be moving. I haven't been in here in nearly six hundred years, but to the room that's been maybe two minutes," he touched a mug on the counter and laughed. "My tea's still warm!"

"Why do you never put the cups away?" the Doctor asked, holding open a cupboard door that held nothing than more pickled specimens.

"Because I usually have slightly more important things to focus on than doing the dishes," Harry pointed to a filing cabinet near the bathroom door with a glass sitting on top of it. "That one's yours."

"How do you know?"

"Because I remember," Harry answered with an annoyed tone as he collected plastic jars from a different cupboard. "You always stood by that door if you were just watching. It's your cup. Wilfred, will you help me with these?"

Wilf stepped forward to help, taking the plastic jars so that Harry could regain his balance on his good leg. The Doctor began coughing again and must have decided that he didn't care if it was really his glass or not, because he picked it up and went over to a small steel door in the wall. When he opened it up, Wilf saw that it was like a miniature fridge built into the wall, and held a few containers of liquid and what looked like an old sandwich.

"I saw a little critter just around the corner there I'd really like to catch," Harry was saying, opening another cupboard and looking through more plastic containers. "Maybe an amphibian? I don't know, but it was almost the size of a cat! Last I was here, most of the life forms were so small that I didn't need anything big enough for a cat yet. I must have something here. . ."

"Look under the chemical evaluation table," the Doctor wheezed between coughs as he poured himself a drink.

"Ah, yes!" Harry exclaimed, hopping over to a table that looked like it had some kind of strange, enormous sewing machine on it. "Well done, Doctor!"

Wilf paused to look at a vine that was growing on the other side of the glass, bearing tiny yellow flowers that flexed open and closed every twenty seconds or so in unison. Harry pulled out another container from under the table that finally appeared big enough, and dropped it on a nearby counter, then scooped up the cup of six-hundred-year-old tea and took a swig.

"I didn't use enough sugar in my first body," he said, looking at the tea curiously before taking another sip. "I'm going to try and catch that little animal first, and then we can get some of the smaller specimens. I'd like to know what that blue stuff is. You don't suppose it's moss?"

A sudden coughing fit interrupted them and Wilf looked back to see the Doctor sputtering, clearly choking on his drink. The worst passed in mere seconds, but he had succeeded in spitting up his drink all over himself.

"What's wrong with you?" Harry asked, seemingly paying attention for the first time. "You didn't eat anything. What could possibly be stuck in your throat?"

"I don't know," the Doctor wheezed. "I thought maybe something came back up when I was getting tossed around."

Harry hopped over to him for a proper look. "What are you drinking?" he demanded, taking the glass from the Doctor's hand.

"It's just water."

"Then why is it coming up pink?" Harry grabbed a white cloth off a table top and dabbed the Doctor's face to show him, the liquid clearly showing up a dark pink. "Is that blood? Are you bleeding?"

The Doctor looked at the cloth, clearly just as surprised as the other two were, and began coughing again.

"Why are you so pale? Are you sick?" Harry continued. "Wilfred, pass me that chair. Do you feel nauseous?"

But the Doctor didn't answer, going into another coughing fit. Wilfred lifted a chair and set it down quickly, taking the Doctor's arm to sit him down. Harry began doing a number of things all at once as the Doctor coughed, grabbing some tool of the table in the center of the room that looked like a glass spatula and pressing it against the side of the Doctor's head while one of his hands traced down his spine and poked around his back.

Finally, he pressed the spatula device against his back between the shoulder blades and announced, "There really is something stuck in there."

"That's good though!" Wilf said, trying to sound happy but sounding more panicked than anything. "That's easy to fix. Cough it up, Doctor!"

He looked down when he heard a splattering sound and saw some bright red droplets of fresh blood on the floor. He caught Harry's eye and they looked at each other with uncertainty.

"Right then," Harry said with determination in his voice, and hobbled around to the back of the chair. "Here we go, Doctor!"

He wrapped his arms around the Doctor, balling one hand into a fist in preparation for the Heimlich maneuver. While the Doctor coughed and retched in a way that sounded almost painful, Harry gave a few strong thrusts before they got a result.

There was a loud and sickening  _splat_  before the Doctor stopped coughing and began gasping for air instead. Wilf bent down to get a good look at whatever had landed on the floor and felt a little sick to his stomach.

There sat, the size of a large grape, a ball of black, congealed blood.


	10. Wilfred

"It tastes gross! Tastes gross!"

Wilf was surprised that the Doctor's complaints of a bad taste was the first thing Harry responded to. He refilled the Doctor's glass and handed it back to him. He noticed Harry's eyes scrutinizing the Doctor carefully as he drank, scanning over his body and glancing at the lump of black blood on the floor.

Last he checked, coughing up blood was meant to be pretty serious, but neither the Doctor nor Harry seemed particularly worried. Harry waited for the Doctor to finish his water before telling him to move to the room's center examination table. The Doctor didn't argue, but instead got carefully to his feet and obeyed.

He hopped up on the table and removed his jacket and tie, then sat in silence. Harry looked stern as he reached forward and began to unbutton the Doctor's shirt, both of them avoiding making eye contact with the other.

Wilfred was unable to hold back a gasp when the Doctor's shirt opened. His entire chest was a rainbow of colours—purples, blues, greens, and yellows. The colours spread all the way down his ribs, ending just before his belly.

Harry stepped back and looked over the colourful canvas for a moment. "Where else?"

The Doctor scratched his head as though he were embarrassed. "Elbows and knees. My hips a bit, in the front here."

"You jumped from a ship, fell God knows how far, crashed through a glass ceiling, landed on a solid stone floor, and you  _didn't_  use nanobots to treat yourself? At the very least you could have used some accelerators or plasma particles to stop the internal bleeding." Harry snatched up the white cloth he used before to pick up the ugly lump of blood. "There is no excuse for this, Doctor. Explain."

"I got a little busy."

"You don't get to make this my fault!" Harry's voice had risen quickly and without warning, his eyes flashing with sudden rage. He realized it immediately and brought it back down to a calm volume, clearing his throat before speaking again. "I wasn't in critical condition. You could have sedated me and taken care of yourself. You could have done it after you treated me. It only takes minutes, and you have had days."

The Doctor looked up at Harry, then back at the floor sheepishly. "I was fine. I scanned myself and I wasn't dying or anything, so I decided to just let it heal on its own."

"Wait just a minute. I don't understand," Wilf interrupted, pointing at the lump in Harry's hand. "If you've just got a bunch of harmless bruising, where did that come from?"

"On a human, a fall like that would have turned the internal organs to a splatter of pulp," Harry explained, crossing his arms and glaring at the Doctor's bruises. "Our species can survive it, but the Doctor still took some rather dramatic damage. That little mass you see there is likely the leftovers that were clotting up the damage to his stomach, esophagus, or lungs—maybe all three. The spin in the altered gravity field must have jostled everything loose. Which means you're likely bleeding again, Doctor."

"If you could make it better, why wouldn't you?" Wilf asked, confused and concerned, unable to tear his eyes away from the terrible discoloration. "Surely, it's got to hurt? If Donna were here, Doctor—"

"Donna's not here, Wilfred."

The Doctor did not look sheepish anymore. He was not embarrassed or worried. His eyes had grown dark at the mention of Donna and he was buttoning his shirt closed again.

"It's my body. What I choose to do with it is none of your business, either of you." The Doctor hopped back off the table and grabbed his tie. "Evidently, I have some things to attend to. I'm sure you two can carry on without me."

When the Doctor turned toward the door, Harry put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. "Doctor. . ."

Wilf watched as a strange moment passed, in which the two men simply gazed at each other. He noticed for the first time that the Doctor was actually a couple inches taller and that Harry pulled his shoulders back and lifted his chin when they faced each other. He wondered if the two were communicating with their minds or if they were simply communicating with their eyes, but there was definitely some level of understanding.

After a moment that seemed to last a lifetime, the Doctor sighed in an annoyed way and lifted his hand. When the Doctor's fingertips touched his head, Harry's eyes did not move away and he leaned slightly into the touch.

The connection lasted mere seconds, but it was enough to bring a ghost of a smile to the Doctor's face. He pulled his hand back and arranged his tie around his neck as if nothing had happened, tying the knot as he stepped towards the door.

"You both know the rules," he said loudly before stepping through the door.

Wilf watched the Doctor through the glass, walking toward the lab's exit. He spent a few seconds trying to work out what might have just happened, but quickly gave it up as a lost cause. He knew how easily people could communicate without words or how meaningful a simple look could be when they had known each for a couple of decades, or even less. He couldn't imagine the kind of connection two people would have if they had known each other for hundreds of years, and came to the conclusion that there was no point in trying to understand it.

"You shouldn't have mentioned Donna," Harry said. "Especially not to scold him. It's too much guilt for him."

"I couldn't say nothing!" Wilf protested.

"I know. But the Doctor is . . . well, he's sensitive," Harry picked up the cloth containing the lump of blood and dropped it into one of the plastic containers he had pulled out earlier. "He's in mourning."

Wilf watched with a certain level of suspicion as Harry sealed up the blood and placed it carefully in steel box next to a machine covered with dozens of tubes. "Mourning for what?" He quickly decided that it was alright for Harry to keep the blood. If he could do anything with it, the Doctor certainly would have been clever enough to know that and wouldn't have left it behind in the first place.

"Women. It's always women with him," Harry sighed and hobbled over to clean up the blood splatters on the floor, bending awkwardly with his leg cast. "There was some woman named Rose that he lost, then he lost Donna, and then he lost a future too."

"What does that mean?"

Harry straightened out again, turning the soiled cloth over in his hands and observing the blood patches thoughtfully. "If you're sitting in a car with your eyes closed, can you still feel when the car changes direction?"

"Er . . . well, yes. But—"

"Time changed," Harry said the words heavily, as though it was something difficult to admit. "It changed direction, and now we're in a future that we weren't meant to have. I nearly got pulled in with the other Time Lords—maybe I wasn't supposed escape it? Maybe I wasn't supposed to tell the Doctor about the failsafe? Maybe you were supposed to die, or I was supposed to die . . . who knows what did it. There was no mistaking the feeling though. We both knew immediately that we had cheated fate."

"But, but . . ." Wilf remembered the conversation with the Doctor in the cafe, when he had seen the Doctor's tears and heard the dread in his voice. "The Doctor said he was going to die. Surely he would be happy to have cheated that?"

Harry shrugged. "You would think, but it's always more complicated than that. He knew something about his future, some other woman. He didn't die, or regenerate, or carry on alone, and so whatever he knew about that future likely won't happen now. Sometimes rewriting time is the very worst thing you can do to yourself." He looked up at the ceiling and sighed again. "Think of it as the kind of loss a person would experience if they found out they couldn't have children . . . something you knew you would love, and now you'll never have it."

"How do you know that?" Wilfred asked, his brows furrowing together as he considered Harry's words. "Has he told you about that future?"

Harry's eyes met his—old and calm eyes. "No."

"And you're not guessing," Wilf continued. "You stole that knowledge."

"A window lets you see through it both ways," Harry confirmed. "I opened my mind to him, to help him feel better and convince him to take care of himself. But, when he looked inside, I looked into him. I wanted to know what happened to Donna."

"You should have just asked, Harold!"

"You know as well as I do that he would never tell," Harry muttered quietly and began rubbing his own forehead with his fingers. "And you wouldn't have enough information. I promise, Wilf, I'm only trying to help. Please don't tell him."

"I really ought to, you know."

"I know."

"And you really must stop doing that!"

"I will."

Wilfred considered it carefully a minute, searching Harry's face for sincerity or deception. "I won't tell him, but just this once! I catch you at it again and you won't even have time to blink before I explain to the Doctor exactly everything I know."

"Thank you," Harry smiled a little. "Really, Wilf, thank you."

"Ah, ah, hold on," Wilf held up a finger. "On one condition."

The smile quickly turned into a frown. "What condition?"

"I want to see your planet." He felt his heart beating a little faster. He knew it was a long shot, but he had to at least try. "Let me see into your head and show me. I want to know what it looks like."

"It probably won't feel nice," Harry warned. "And you'll likely get a headache."

"That's alright," Wilf answered eagerly. "I'd like to see it."

Harry tilted his head to the side, his eyes squinting slightly at him in a way that made him feel as though he were standing naked in front of the classroom. Then, quite suddenly, he felt a rush of heat and a flood of colour filled his eyes.

Harry had been standing several feet away from him but, somehow, he projected the image clearly in his mind. He stood in what looked like a clearing in some woods, but the trees had leaves of silver that danced with fiery light. The sky was solid orange without a cloud to be seen, and just peeking over the tree tops he could see the white cap of a mountain. He could even feel a crisp breeze on his skin that promised snow.

Just as he was bending down to observe the deep red grass, he heard it. A faint laugh, somewhere in the trees.

"Hello?" He looked out to where the sound came from and saw a flicker of movement.

There, in the shade, stood an extremely pale woman. Her skin was as white as pearl, and shimmered slightly when she moved. She was remarkably tall—near seven feet—in a plain and modest red robe. Her eyes and hair were a pale silver, while her lips were black as night.

She gazed at him intently with a crooked smile on her face. Then she spoke with a hollow, whisper of a voice: "You will regret this day."

The forest suddenly swirled with a blur of colour into nothingness, and he found himself standing back in the lab. Harry was now leaning against the room's center table, with his hands planted firmly on its surface to steady himself.

"Sorry. I didn't do that right," Harry said quietly, his eyes unnaturally wide. "Did it scare you?"

"No, no," Wilf assured him, pulling up the chair they had sat the Doctor in before and grabbing Harry's elbow to guide him into it. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," Harry took the offered chair and nodded his head. "I'm just a bit dizzy. I think I need to eat something."

"Alright, no problem. I can handle that." Wilf grabbed the mug of ancient tea from the counter top and pushed it into Harry's hands. "Drink that quick, and we'll get you down to the kitchen."


	11. The Doctor

When the Doctor pushed open the door to the kitchen, he saw the Master sitting on one of the bright red bar stools, munching on some crackers. Wilf was working around the stove, speaking animatedly and repeatedly gesturing to a large book that sat open on the counter. They saw him before he caught on to the conversation's topic and quickly fell silent.

"Have a seat," Wilf said after a moment's hesitation. "Beans on toast? I'm heating up some chicken too."

"Brilliant," he answered.

The Master grabbed his crutches that he had leaning against the counter and moved them to his other side, clearing the space for the bar stool next to him. There was no invitation or question—he had always been very good at silently telling the Doctor exactly where he belonged.

As he slid onto the stool, the Master pushed the plate of crackers over so that it sat between them.

"I was just telling Harry about some of the things I've been learning from that book," Wilf began as he filled up the kettle. "I've barely glanced through it and I'm already amazed. Two hearts, three different ways to give birth, shared thoughts and dreams, and there was a diagram of a tongue with about a million little notes on it! And what on earth is a  _narin_? I've only properly read the introductory chapter and it mentioned something called narin twice but didn't say what it was."

The Doctor took a cracker off the plate and nibbled at it. "It's a chemical that opens up and connects the mental pathways between two people. It's usually found in saliva."

"You don't usually taste it," the Master added. "But once a girl kissed me in school, and her narin tasted like old pickles with bits of fish."

Wilf laughed. "Needed to use mouthwash, eh?"

"I don't know why you gave him a big book like that when you can just explain most of it. It takes him two hours to get the garbled version of something you could tell him in two minutes." Harry’s elbow jabbed him in the side. "Show him your shevra."

He nearly choked on his cracker and tasted a fresh spurt of blood in his mouth.

Wilf raised an eyebrow. "Do I  _want_  to see a shevra?"

"Oh sure, there's nothing to it. The Doctor's just secretly an old prude on the inside."

He waited until the Master had stood up and turned away from him to wipe his mouth, finding a little streak of blood on the back of his hand afterwards. Wilf tossed him a dish towel without a word and carried on watching as the Master removed his shirt as if nothing had happened.

"See this funny pink bit of skin that looks like a scar?" the Master asked, bending his arm to point out the pink, knobbed skin in the center of his lower back.

Wilf nodded and began dishing out beans onto plates. "It looks like you've had some spinal surgery."

The Master shook his head and pulled his T-shirt back on. "It's a shevra. All of our people had them—it's a bit like a nerve hub that handles most of our sensations regarding time. It tells us when the car is changing direction, if you will."

"If that's all it is, why wouldn't the Doctor show me?"

"I would have. It's just kind of considered a private spot."

"Listen to him! He's meant to be a doctor," the Master scoffed. "You want to teach this man the science behind a Time Lord's body but you're too embarrassed to show him your no-no places? Honestly—"

"The shevra is private because it's very sensitive," he explained, speaking very loudly to stop the Master from carrying on. "It connects straight to the brain, so if you touch it carefully it feels rather nice—"

" _Very_  nice."

"But if you hit it just right and hard enough, you can force a Time Lord into regeneration. The brain is convinced that there is irreparable damage while the body knows that there is no damage. The fight that occurs between the two means that it's incredibly painful," he shuddered slightly at the thought. "Naturally, a man feels a little protective over it."

Wilf pushed some plates their way and looked at the Doctor with raised eyebrows. "Have you had it happen?"

Before he could answer, the Master spoke up. "You can't complain if you had it coming to you."

"You weren't there! That was the biggest mockery of a trial I've ever seen in my life."

"At least yours was quick," the Master responded with a shrug. "I've had it happen to me, but whenever I'd start regenerating, they gave it another good wallop just to delay the whole thing. I wound up shrieking like a banshee for a good hour before they finally let me regenerate."

He'd never heard of a council using that kind of cruelty before. "Why would someone do that?"

The Master met his eyes for a brief second before shrugging. "Stole some stuff, didn't pay child support, that sort of thing." Then he shovelled a heaping spoon of beans into his mouth.

He shouldn't really be surprised. He could think of hundreds, if not thousands, of people who would be thrilled with the idea of torturing the notorious Master for an hour, but he had never thought that it might have actually happened. Whenever they crossed paths, the Master always seemed so nonchalant and in control that it was difficult to imagine that he had ever experienced true fear or devastation.

On the other hand, a lot of people probably thought the same thing about the Doctor.

"You'll have to tell me about it sometime."

The Master looked at him carefully, eyes squinting a little as he thought about it. After a few seconds he gave a quick nod and turned back to his food.

"Nice to see you two kids playing nice," Wilf said cheerfully as he took the kettle of the stove for his tea. "I'd like it if the three of us could sit together like this more often."

"It's a good change," the Doctor agreed. "One of many, I hope."

He glanced over at the Master again, peeking at him from the corner of his eye. He hunched over his plate and devoured his meal in a way that suggested food was the only thought on his mind, but the Doctor was watching his eyes. He knew those eyes. Though they had changed shape and colour many times, he still understood the look in those eyes perfectly.

"Here" The Doctor reached into his jacket and pulled out the little bottle of pills he had stored in his inner pocket. "One with every meal."

The Master took the bottle from his hand and looked at the bright pink capsules carefully as he chewed. "What about the yellow ones?"

"Your last two blood tests came back clean. Lucy's poison is completely out of your system."

He had hoped that this would cheer him up and stop him thinking about whatever old memories he was thinking about. He thought presenting an easier form of medication, a sign of trust, and the good news that his body was no longer being attacked could only make him happy. He hadn't expected to see the Master's expression go from somber to pained. He certainly never thought it would cause tears to well up in his eyes.

Before the Doctor could even react, Wilfred had taken one of the Master's hands in his own and put his other hand on the Master's shoulder. "What's the matter? Oh, what's wrong, Harry?"

"I don't know. Sorry, I'm—I'm just over due for it then, aren't I?" The Master shrugged it off and carefully removed Wilf's hands. "I get a bit funny if I don't do everything right on time, don't I?"

He popped open the bottle with a word of thanks and quickly swallowed one of the pills. Wilf and the Doctor exchanged a quick look before murmuring words of agreement. It was hard to tell when it really was just the Master's mind or body reacting badly to something or if he was simply using it as an excuse, but the Doctor felt pretty suspicious about this.

"How about a cup of tea, Grandfather?" the Master asked, pulling off a rather believable smile.

"Oh, of course!" Wilf jumped to attention immediately and went to put the kettle back on the stove. "Tell you what, I brought a lovely vanilla and cinnamon tea in my bag—supposed to be good for the nerves. Let's give that a try, eh? Back in a tick."

Wilfred scurried out the door as fast as he could, and was especially careful to close the door properly behind him. He heard the Master chuckle to himself.

"What do you want to bet it takes him ten minutes to find that tea? He's not exactly subtle, is he?"

"No, not really." He couldn't help but chuckle as well, but also realized he couldn't miss the opportunity Wilf had given them. ". . . Did you want to talk?"

"We have been talking."

"You know what I mean."

"Did  _you_  want to talk?" The Master looked him in the eyes, fearless and challenging. "We're not the talking kind. Not about that anyway."

"You don't have to tell me what happened," he answered, being sure to meet the challenging gaze without reacting to it. "You can just talk. Like we used to."

"Back when we were friends." There was bitterness in his voice.

"We talked about this, remember? We can be friends again, in time."

"What if we don't have time?"

He could sense the other Time Lord's emotions radiating off him. He could feel the stress in him intensifying and felt rolling waves of a desperate kind of loneliness that he was all too familiar with. It was slightly unstable, so he knew that part of this really was to blame on the late medication. But he also knew that the root of it was real.

He wondered how much the Master knew about the things he said when he slipped into instability. He wondered if he knew what he had told Wilfred as he shook and got sick the day the Doctor explored his mind without permission.

The kettle was whistling, so he slid off his bar stool to tend to it. He thought carefully over what to say as he removed it from the burner. This was tender ground and saying the wrong thing could be devastating. He leaned against the counter, face to face with the Master, and spoke.

"The other night, when you were sick, you were talking to Wilfred," he began slowly, carefully, watching for any cues from the other to stop talking. "And you told him that you didn't want to die."

The Master’s eyes widened slightly. He was surprised. He didn't know he had said it, and that meant that it was a real fear.

"I won't let you die."

Tears welled in the Master’s eyes again, a shock of strong emotion rippled through the atmosphere, and he immediately turned his face away. "Can you wait for the damn drugs to kick in before you say stuff like that?"

He couldn't help but smile a bit. "Sorry." He carefully stretched out his hand and rested it on the Master's shoulder, feeling the skin tense beneath his fingers. To his surprise the Master reacting very suddenly. His elbows moved onto the counter so that he could drop his head in his hands, effectively hiding his face.

"It all made sense at the time," he blurted out quickly, his voice quivering slightly. "It was almost like it wasn't happening—like it was a game or something—and it just made sense to do what I was doing. And  _now_  . . ." He stopped for a moment to breathe, and the Doctor was able to feel his psychic aura stabilizing a little. "I just fucked it all up."

Guilt. He was familiar with guilt. He felt it glowing from the Master's mind like an old friend waving at him from a distance. But guilt was  _good_. Guilt was genuine. Bad men don't feel guilt.

He gave the Master a little tug on his ear lobe to get his attention, a sign of affection they once shared centuries ago. "I want you to take one of these." He pulled another bottle from his jacket pocket, this one containing two grey capsules. "I can't keep nanobots on the ship. The frequent solar storms I run into jumble up their programming too much for them to be worth the work, but these should do just fine. When we're both back in one piece, we can work on making up for things."

He was surprised that the Master didn't immediately grab for the precious little pill, especially with the fuss he'd been making over his leg. He had to open the bottle himself and hand one to his companion, hoping that this at least would cheer him up.

"We'll feel like hell for a few hours," the Master muttered quietly, looking at the pill in his hand. "Especially you, all banged up like that."

"Then we'll feel like hell together, and Wilfred can make us soothing vanilla cinnamon tea to calm our nerves."

"If he ever finds it."

"Oh, he knows exactly where it is."

The Master sniffled a little and rubbed at his eyes, trying to bring himself back to a normal state. The Doctor felt his emotional vibes quieting down and stabilizing, but he wasn't sure if it was thanks to the medication or simply because he'd gotten something off his chest. Either was good news, he supposed.

"I really wanted to catch that amphibian, you know. If it was an amphibian, that is. I might never know now."

The Doctor grabbed some glasses to fetch them both some water. His throat was far too raw and painful to take a pill without it and the last thing he wanted was to choke and spit it up with another fresh spurt of blood. In the beginning, the pain was just something solid and real that he could hold onto, reminding him of his sanity and that he was, in fact, still alive. Now, however, with his fresh jostling and new, nasty bruises forming from the Master's assistance earlier, he decided it would be foolish to deny himself medical treatment any further—especially now that his companions knew about it.

"The time streams are all slowed down now," he said as he pushed a glass of water across the counter. "It will still be there tomorrow, after we've rested. You'll even be able to chase after it if you need to."

"That would feel good," the Master raised his glass to the Doctor. "Bottoms up."

The Doctor raised his glass in response and they both swallowed the little grey pill. He felt it scrape the sides of his swollen, irritated throat all the way down and winced but luckily didn't choke. He quickly drank the rest of the water to make sure everything stayed down.

The Master pushed his empty glass back when he was finished and took a deep breath. "Don't tell Wilf I cried."

"I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't see you cry."

"Good, because I didn't."

"Shall I bring him back in then?"

The Master nodded quickly, wiping his eyes once more just to be sure. "Go on then."

The Doctor looked toward the kitchen's door and spoke in a loud, clear voice. "I wonder what's taking Wilf so long? Maybe we should go help him look?"

Wilfred was at least smart enough to wait a good thirty seconds to come through the door so as not to look like he had been hovering just outside it. Everyone knew that everyone knew, but that wasn't the point.


	12. The Master

The Master felt absolutely miserable, but at least the Doctor felt worse. Wilf had them both bundled up in blankets with cups of the surprisingly comforting vanilla cinnamon tea in their hands. They'd tried to explain that they weren't sick, but Wilf couldn't seem to override his paternal instincts and insisted on treating them as though they had the flu. The Doctor had to keep a little bin next to him as his coughing fits were still producing blood.

He was tired and a bit light headed but, once in a while, he would feel an encouraging movement from beneath his leg's cast. The Doctor winced in pain or moaned on occasion and Wilfred studied his books between cups of tea and fretting. He was healing, everything was calm, and the poison was gone. He knew that he should be ecstatic and thanking the Doctor non-stop, but he couldn't seem to muster the happiness. He couldn't just stop thinking about Lucy.

He'd had a strange relationship with Lucy, but he supposed at the heart of it there had been some real feelings. He knew that she had loved him fiercely, and while she was really only meant to be a pawn, he had grown attached.

She was beautiful and devoted. She had been good at calming him down when he was not himself, and she had been reliable in aiding him with his plans. How could things have gone if he had decided that that was enough? He imagined the Doctor's face when he finally tracked him down just to realize that he had become Prime Minister simply to make a better England—funding medical research, building new schools, and the like. The thought made him chuckle, earning him an odd look from the other two men in the room.

He realized that Lucy must have been a little mad herself to help him, but she would have done whatever he said. He could have chosen to make Earth better, and they could have done wonders together. The Doctor would probably have even helped him.

Instead he became a nightmare for everyone, including his own wife. He should have known she would kill him. He'd seen her cry too much and he'd hurt her too many times. She stopped kissing him or touching him on her own, and when they went to bed she huddled up on her side as if she hoped he wouldn't notice her. She had a quiet rage in her. He'd known that all along. That's why he chose her. He should have known better than to direct that rage at himself.

Now Lucy was dead. She'd died with her rage, trying her hardest to stop him from breathing life again. Now even her poison was gone, and there was nothing left of her at all. He couldn't believe how stupid he was to have learned nothing from the war.

The Doctor said they would make up for it. But how do you make up for that many mistakes? He didn't even know where to begin.

"How much time energy do you think the lab gets exposed to?"

"Quite a lot, I would imagine," the Doctor answered, sipping his tea. "Why?"

"You're piloting has affected the evolution of my trees. Every time you fly they'd also get doused with time energy, plus any time the ship's been damaged or you've regenerated," he tapped his chin thoughtfully. "I'm just wondering how much the time energy will have affected the life in there. Particularly the animals—how has it influenced the development of their brains?"

"If they have brains."

"Any of their organs really."

"I'm sure they've been affected somehow."

"Do you think anything in there can regenerate?"

"Possibly."

His leg erupted in a series of crackles and he could feel the bone fusing back together. It was painful, and very uncomfortable, but at least he knew it would be finished soon. He couldn't wait to get the cast off and wash his leg. It probably smelled like old cheese and sweat under that thing.

"Is it supposed to sound like popping corn?" Wilf asked curiously, eyes wide and watching the bound leg as if it might explode.

"It's fine," the Doctor answered with a groan. "It just means the accelerators are working."

At a guess, he would probably be done healing in an hour. The Doctor would take a couple hours more from the state of him. His face was almost completely healed, just bearing remnants of the purple bruise where the Master had struck him the other night. He was just about to say so when the Doctor suddenly doubled over and retched another glob of blood into his handy bin.

"Oh God, that feels better," the Doctor sighed, slumping back into his chair and pulling his blanket tight around shoulders.

Wilfred was visibly horrified every time he saw the blood, but he tried his best to hide it. "You're getting a little colour back in your cheeks, Doctor."

"I'll get some more colour once I get off the ship for a bit," the Doctor answered. "We've been too still for too long, and if the Master here is going to alter gravity fields for the sake of a little wind, then we best get some fresh air."

"Back to London then?"

That made him laugh, and the Doctor smiled. "Anywhere in space and time, and you want to go back to London?"

Wilf smiled sheepishly. "I know my way around there."

"Would you like to see another world, Wilf?" the Doctor asked kindly. "Or we could see London in a different time. Join the Romans when they set up camp for the first time, watch knights jousting, or see it during the golden years when the King was married to a lovely Aldarian girl."

He tried to sit patiently and listen to the conversation, but he found himself getting increasingly restless. Even though his leg ached as it healed itself, he didn't want to sit anymore. His mind was trying to wander back in time and he was filled with the familiar urge to run and keep running—he needed to direct that somewhere f he was going to stay sane. He kept thinking about the Doctor saying they would find ways to make up for the things he had done and the wheels in his head had begun turning.

As Professor Yana, he had been determined to do something good, even though he hadn't expected to live to see the benefits. He remembered seeing the admiration in the Doctor's eyes and hearing it in his voice. That had been a step back in time and he couldn't believe now that he hadn't taken advantage of that. He had built the hatred up inside him so high that he couldn't even remember that it had been born in jealous love.

At least Professor Yana had taught him that he could still be the man he once was. He knew he was still capable of being someone the Doctor admired and enjoyed the company of. If he had been kind and selfless once, then he could do it again if he really tried.

"Doctor, I want to break the rules."

Wilfred had obviously been in mid-sentence because his mouth was open. They were looking at him now with puzzled expressions, probably trying to figure out if he had meant to say that or not.

"Let me go back to the lab," he rushed the words out, wanting to explain himself before the Doctor said no. "I don't want to use it just to keep from getting bored, I want to  _do_  something with it. I can't do anything worthwhile with just one hour a day. Let me stay in there and work. Lock me in if you want to. Give me a guard I can't touch—that thing I've seen in the mirror or whatever the hell is in the empty bedroom down the hall I've heard you talking to. Whatever you need to do."

There was an odd silence, in which the Doctor stared at him and Wilfred looked back and forth between them, seemingly holding his breath.

"That's asking a lot," the Doctor said quietly.

"I know. I know it is."

"I set the rules for a reason."

"I understand that."

The Doctor stared at him for another long moment, and he could almost hear the alarm bells ringing in his head. He was deciding against it, he could tell.

"You've always been ready to give me another chance, Doctor." He made sure to meet the Doctor's eyes and to open his mental pathways so that the Doctor could see he wasn't trying to hide. "You told me what I could be if I tried. I want to try now."

_ You could be beautiful. _

It was dangerous to mention that. It would make the Doctor remember being strapped up and all the terrible things the Master had done that day, but he might also remember his faith. No matter what, the Doctor had always had faith that he could pull the Master back from his madness, that there was still a good person there somewhere.

"You need to do this right now?"

"Call it inspiration."

The Doctor's eyes spoke of fear and uncertainty. He felt a chill close in and knew the Doctor was silently stalking around the outside of his mind, so he made sure to make the open pathway clear and extend a sense of welcoming. The Doctor wasn't skilled enough as a telepath to properly look into his mind without touching him, but he could still pick up basic emotions and anything that was being actively projected his way—he would know now that he was given permission to look.

He was definitely getting better at holding himself back, but he knew that was picking up things from the Doctor's mind that he wasn't supposed to be seeing. He saw himself in the Doctor's arms, dying and smiling at the same time.

" _I refuse."_

The image filled him with immediate sadness. Is that what it really came down to?

The Doctor withdrew quickly, leaving a cold emptiness behind. "Boris will watch you."

He blinked in surprise. Was that agreement?

"He's Vashta Mereen. He might be friendly but he  _can_  still eat you, and he will if he considers you a threat to anyone on the ship," the Doctor continued, decidedly not looking at him now. "You will set a timer for every two hours when you  _must_  leave the lab for meals and medication. If you are so much as three seconds late leaving, it will result in a ban until your medication is no longer needed. Nothing enters or leaves the lab without my express permission. If, for whatever reason, Wilfred asks you to come out of the lab or do anything else, you are to follow his orders without question. Leave your cast on until I say you can take it off, and as soon as I am finished healing, I will be supervising you. I do not like changing rules I have set, and I will not be changing them again. Am I understood?"

The Doctor looked a little pale after such a longwinded speech and he suppressed a little cough.

"Absolutely."

"You will wait outside of the lab until Boris arrives. You  _do not_  go in without him."

"Understood."

"Good. Now get out of here and give me some peace," he coughed a few times. "Wilfred, would you fetch Boris for me? I'll need to explain the arrangement to him."

Wilfred agreed happily and the two left the room together. Once the door closed behind them, he heard the Doctor go into another wretched coughing fit that he had likely been holding in while they were talking. His determination to establish himself as an authority figure preventing him from showing any weakness while he set rules.

"Well done, lad!" Wilf exclaimed once they were in the hall, giving him a slap on the back. "You do something grand and show the Doctor what you're made of! Do me a favour, and just don't kill us in the process, eh?"


	13. The Doctor

The Doctor had fallen asleep at some point while he was healing. He woke up lying on the sofa with a pillow under his head and a blanket laid over him so perfectly that he knew he didn't simply drag the items with him when he slumped over. Bless Wilf and his kind heart.

When he stood up, he was happy to see that the movement wasn't accompanied with any of the sharp pains or aches that he had grown accustomed to. A glance in the mirror showed him a clear face, though his jaw still had a slight blue tint as the old bruise was still being worked from his system.

He felt so much better—a bit more like himself—and he was more than ready for an adventure. He really wanted to treat Wilf to something special, but he was also worried about finding a safe place to bring the Master.

He was learning that it was extremely difficult to find a proper balance between caution and trust when it came to his old friend. He wanted to believe that he had changed, but he just couldn't take that for granted. He was trying hard to be supportive and kind, but once in a while an old memory would surface and he would find himself feeling bitter or angry.

The Master claimed that he once had, and that he might still have, feelings for the Doctor. He remembered being pretty sure of it when they were young, but sometimes he wondered how much of it was an act. The Master had done terrible things to him—terrible and ruthless. It seemed hard to imagine doing those sorts of things to someone you cared about, even if you were mad.

Oh, it was too complicated. No matter what, the Master would always keep him guessing.

He made a quick trip to his bedroom to change his clothes and fix his hair, deciding to skip the shower until he'd checked up on the Master. He stopped in front of the mirror to check the progress on his injuries before he left. Most of the bruising was gone, but it was still quite purple under his ribs where the Master's arms had rather forcefully helped him earlier. He slipped on a button-up shirt and decided to leave behind his jacket so that he could easily check the progress.

The TARDIS was humming happily as he made his way to the lab and there wasn't anything to suggest that anything terrible had happened.

After he passed through the decontamination chamber and the next set of doors opened, he felt as if his breath had been taken away. He hadn't properly looked at the Master's creation when they came in earlier, he had been feeling too ill and had too much on his mind.

He took a deep breath and tasted something sweet in the air. The Master hadn't seemed too happy about the Doctor's piloting affecting his trees, but the Doctor couldn't help but feel a little proud. They had adapted beautifully—wide trunks and thick roots to prevent getting ripped out, flexible but ribbed bodies so that they could bend and sway without breaking. He wondered how many trees had toppled over and broken during a rough landing, especially with the different time streams. One minute of turbulence for the TARDIS meant nearly two years of earthquakes for this ecosystem.

As he made his way over to the glass dome, he kept his eyes on the trees. He couldn't see anything, but he knew there was something in there. He felt eyes watching him and heard some strange hissing sounds whispering in the air. The amount of life in this place could keep the Master busy for decades.

When he pushed open the glass door, Boris was waiting to greet him. His shadowy face had carved itself into a ready smile and he bowed his head with a sweeping gesture of his arm. The Doctor couldn't help but smile back, glad to see that Boris was in a good mood.

"I put the cups away."

The Master didn't look up or stop what he was doing when he said it. He was standing at the center examination table with all the lights turned on and aimed at a small blue body lying on top of it. The Master had on a set of glasses with microscope attachments and an assortment of dissection tools set before him, completely absorbed in his work.

"I caught my amphibian."

"And killed it, I see." The Doctor made his way across the lab to turn on the kettle, glancing at the strange animal as he passed.

"It'll be fine," the Master answered as he carefully removed what looked like a tiny white kidney.

"I don't see how when you've cut it to pieces."

The Master still didn't look up at him, and he was finding it irritating. "The computer has it saved. As long as I put all the pieces back it should jump start him back up once I'm done."

The Doctor opened the cupboard and found that the Master had truthfully washed and put away all the cups. "I don't see why it would go through that much trouble."

He heard a sigh that he knew well—it meant that the Master thought he had said something stupid. He hadn't heard that sigh in a long time, but he certainly remembered hearing it all too often in this room. He had intended to learn about terraforming engines in greater detail for centuries, but he always managed to find something else to do. He was regretting that now.

"The computer is programmed to keep absolute purity in the evolution process," the Master explained, extracting another organ that looked almost like an oyster. "If we kill something, on purpose or otherwise, the computer reanimates it with a shot of the terraforming agent to make sure that we don't contaminate the evolutionary process in any way. I told you that when I built the lab, and it should be obvious besides."

The Doctor sifted the information through his head and dared to allow a spark of hope. "Is that standard programming for most terraforming engines?"

The Master finally looked up at him, too smart to know it was a random question. "Do you have a year, model, or planet of origin?"

"Most likely either human or hath. I found it in 6012."

"Then, yes, it should have it." He turned back to his specimen, picking up a syringe to extract a thick yellow fluid from its body. "Who died?"

"A girl," the Doctor answered as nonchalantly as he could, but he knew he was smiling. "You would like her."

The Master simply shook his head. "You and your weakness for women . . ."

The kettle was already boiling, and he was glad for it because it gave him something to do and he set to making himself some tea. "Learn anything interesting about your amphibian?"

"It's not an amphibian."

"What is it then?"

"It's a plant."

That had his attention immediately. At first glance, he would have sworn it was an animal. He leaned towards the table for a better look. The creature reminded him most of a hairless squirrel, about the size of a cat with white fingers that were remarkably long for the proportions of its body. The blue skin seemed very thick and full of veins and, upon closer inspection, it seemed to have the same leathery toughness of corn husks. Its tail split half way down into half a dozen threads that looked very similar to the animal's fingers. He couldn't see its face clearly, as the Master had already opened its skull.

"That's a plant?"

"It's obviously evolved to become mobile as a way to survive regular earthquake-like activity that would tear a regular plant from the ground. At this point, it's so advanced that it's just a couple tiny steps away from being an animal.  _Why_  don't you just learn how to fly this thing properly?"

"What, and make all these life-forms start from scratch? That just wouldn't be fair to them."

The Master simply grunted in return and went back to work. The Doctor finished making his cup of tea and watched silently, realizing after a few minutes that the Master had been right about his cup after all. He found himself slipping into very old habits, standing near the bathroom door and leaning against the filing cabinet. It was only now that he could distinctly remember regularly leaving his drinks sitting on top of it.

"Right, have a seat then," the Doctor announced. "Let's get that cast off."

The Master paused to look longingly at his half dissected creature before complying. He removed his gloves and glasses and hopped over to the nearest chair to sit down, pulling up the leg of his trousers as high as he could.

"Boris," the Doctor turned to the waiting shadow in the corner. "If you would be so kind."

Boris's body collapsed on itself, dissolving into mere wisps of shadow. The shadows shot towards the Master and danced around the cast on his leg for a few seconds before it cracked open. Just as the Doctor bent down to pull away the cast, the Master suddenly jumped with a surprised shout, his foot finding its way straight into the Doctor's ribs.

"He's eating me!"

The Doctor folded his arms over his stomach, his eyes watering slightly from the pain. The kick hadn't been especially hard, but it got him right where his bruising was most severe.

"He's cleaning you!" the Doctor barked at him angrily. "Boris, be gentle!"

The Master tried his best to sit still, but the Doctor could see clear discomfort on his face. He squirmed and gasped quietly every few seconds as Boris carefully removed any remains of the plaster and the dead skin that had grown underneath. Finally, the shadows drifted away, leaving behind a perfectly clean and rather pink leg.

"I wish you had warned me he would do that!" the Master said, clutching his leg protectively. "I've come across Vashta Nerada before and it didn't end well."

"I told you, he's Vashta  _Mereen_!" the Doctor growled, wincing as he tried to stand up straight.

"What's wrong with you now?"

"You kicked me!"

He saw the lights turn on in the Master's eyes. He already knew. Before the Doctor had time to say anything the Master had grabbed his arm and was pulling him over to the examination table.

"I'm not getting up on there with your little butchered animal," the Doctor protested.

"It's a plant."

"I don't care what it is, I'm not sitting on your table so you can poke at me." The Doctor crossed his arms stubbornly and made sure to plant his feet firmly on the ground—he might have been taller than the Master but he knew he didn't weigh much. "I'll remind you that  _I_  am the doctor on this ship and I am perfectly capable—"

"I don't care what you're capable of," the Master interrupted, pulling one of his overhead lights so that it was over the Doctor now. "You've already shown that you won't take care of yourself. Now, let me see what you've done."

The Master brought his hands up to unbutton his shirt for him but the Doctor slapped them away. "I think I can at least handle buttons by myself."

He unbuttoned the first three rather quickly, huffing in irritation as he did so, but the defiance in him quickly rushed out as he undid the fourth. He felt a tingle on the back of his neck and recognized it as the feeling of Boris's touch—a few members of the swarm communicating for the whole.

He had never been able to have a conversation with Boris as it was too difficult to hold a connection with a swarm of billions, but he was able to receive a word or two, or even an image on occasion. Boris showed him an image taken just a moment ago, looking up at the Master's face and seeing true fear in his eyes. He wasn't joking about the Vashta Nerada.

_ Be kind. _

The shadow whispered softly into his mind before departing. He paused to look down at his old friend, to see the worry in his eyes and to feel for any emotions hanging about him. Now that he was paying attention, he felt the lingering of fear being pushed out by new feelings of concern.

"Did you lose someone?" he asked quietly, as he undid the rest of the buttons on his shirt. "To the Vashta Nerada?"

"You could say that," the Master answered, pulling his trouser leg back down as he waited. "They took all my skin, then they buried into me and starting eating away at my nerves. They kept going until I regenerated."

The Doctor's mouth dropped open in shock as the horrific scene grew in his imagination. "But Vashta Nerada don't torture people."

"No, they don't. But Time Lords do." To his great surprise the Master smiled at him. "And apparently, if you're a skilled enough telepath you can learn to control a swarm."

The Doctor opened his mouth to ask another question, but the look on the Master's face told him not to. He had seen his fair share of horrors, and experienced an awful lot of pain, but he'd never been skinned alive. He supposed that if they had switched positions, he would have refused to even mention it, let alone talk about it.

He'd forgotten about his buttons by now, and the Master calmly undid the last two for him and gently pushed the material away. He saw the Master's eyes widen at the sight of the purple bruising and he felt his fingertips touch it lightly.

"I did this."

"You did, but it was to help me," the Doctor reassured him.

"Does it hurt if I touch it?" the Master asked, pressing his fingers gently against the bruise.

"Yeah, a bit."

"Then it's not just old blood that the accelerators haven't cleared away yet," the Master said quietly, his eyes looking over the bruises and his fingers tracing them along the Doctor's rib to his side. "There's still damage that needs to be repaired."

Time seemed to slow down for a moment then. The Doctor felt the Master's hand slowly following the bruise around to his back, his fingers gliding lightly over the skin. He found himself leaning against the examination table behind him, his hands gripping its edge firmly. He felt as if he couldn't move or speak.

The fingers continued around his back, getting close to the sensitive skin surrounding his shevra. The touch wouldn't normally stimulate anything in particular if he wasn't so acutely aware of it, and the muscles in his back were beginning to tense up in response.

"I did this too," the Master added, bringing up his other hand to lightly touch the fading bruise on the Doctor's jaw.

Now the Master was looking at his face, and the Doctor met his eyes. He suddenly felt what he could only describe as helplessness. He felt as though he were completely paralyzed, unable to move or speak. He wasn't sure what the Master was intending to do, but his mind was too distracted with following the path of the Master's fingers, a mere inch away from the tender flesh of his shevra now, to ask. He suddenly felt too warm and a little bit like he was suffocating. The Master was too close to him. His hands shouldn't be touching him, and his face shouldn't be so close, but for some reason his mouth wouldn't work to say so.

"You should take another accelerator," the Master said, pulling his hands away and taking a step back. "And you really should have made sure you were properly healed before you came in here."

The Master reached up to return his overhead light to its original position and then turned back to collect the remains of his cast off the floor. The Doctor found himself feeling slightly confused and a little out of breath, the skin on his back tingling in longing for the lost sensation.

"We don't know what kind of micro-organisms live in the lab, and you put yourself at greater risk if you're hurt."

The Doctor quickly pulled his shirt shut and hastily began doing up buttons, as the Master carried on working like he didn't have a care in the world. "Yes, um, well," the Doctor cleared his throat and tried to look anywhere except at the Master. "Listen, uh . . . were you about to—"

"Yep."

Well, at least he hadn't imagined it.

"And you—well, what—um . . ."

"You looked like you were about to piss yourself," the Master answered with a grin on his face, clearly taking delight in the embarrassed Doctor's discomfort. "And you're still red as a tomato by the way. Besides, you were clear enough last time. I just forgot myself for a moment. Sorry."

"Right." The Doctor knew that if he wasn't blushing before he definitely was now that his cheeks felt like they were on fire. "Well, that's good then."

The Master paused, holding the chunks of cast in his hands and watching the Doctor with an amused smile. "What . . . did you want me to?"

"No. Well . . . no."

The Master was properly laughing now. "Been a while, eh?"

It had been a long time. His skin had obviously been craving to be touched without him even noticing if it had given a response like that.

"I will, you know. Just ask."

" _No_ , thank you that won't be necessary."

The Master laughed again with a shake of his head, tossing the old cast into a large bin beside the examination table. "Maybe you should go take your accelerator."

"Yes, I think I should."

And full to the brim with embarrassment and with far too much blood in his face, the Doctor hurried out of the lab.


	14. Wilfred

While Harry seemed quite happy to have his leg working properly again, Wilf was surprised that he wasn't eager to leave the ship. The Doctor had repeatedly mentioned going somewhere after they had healed, but Harry never seemed to have an opinion. He shrugged his shoulders and muttered noncommittal agreements. The most Wilf had seen him do with the regained use of his leg was go for a swim in the pool.

There was something a bit strange going on as well, but he couldn't put his finger on it. Harry and the Doctor were getting along just fine, and hadn't fought in days, but they seemed to be avoiding each other as well. They would sit in the same room but they didn't start conversation with each other. He might not have noticed it if he hadn't witnessed a strange interaction between the two the day after Harry's leg was fixed.

The Doctor had been tinkering with a chunk of machinery he had literally ripped out of one of the walls. Harry wandered over to watch, standing beside the Doctor's chair when the Doctor visibly tensed up.

"You're standing too close."

He said it calmly, and without so much as a trace of negativity. He thought that was strange enough, but when Harry simply walked away without a word and without even seeming bothered, he knew he was missing something.

Harry was spending more and more time in his lab, and even when he left the lab he always looked so deep in thought. He'd taken to carrying a little notepad in his pocket and keeping a pen tucked behind his ear, occasionally taking it out and writing something down. Wilf tried to ask him about his research sometimes, but it was difficult to understand a lot of the things Harry told him about.

He found it easier to understand what Harry was talking about if they were actually in the lab together, and he had something he could see in front of him. A strange little blue animal with a rather bulbous looking head had picked up the habit of hanging around the glass dome and, once in a while, Harry would open the door to let it inside. Most of the time it just climbed up on top of machines and filing cabinets to look back out at the jungle or hide under a table somewhere but very rarely it would carefully approach Harry and sit with him.

Harry had managed to go a full nine days without an 'attack', but when it finally happened, it struck him with a vengeance. He had overslept and missed his medication time, resulting in one of the most terrible mornings Wilfred could remember. He woke up to the kind of screaming he hadn't heard since he was a young man in the war.

When they went into his bedroom Harry's arm was covered in blood from where he had apparently bitten himself. He screamed at them to stay back, to go away, and then threatened to shoot them. The Doctor told Wilf to stay in the doorway until he decided it was safe, and to run if Harry got violent.

"You're in the TARDIS," the Doctor began to speak as calmly as possible, stepping very slowly towards him. "You're perfectly safe here."

"Just stop!"

The Doctor froze in place, holding his hands up in surrender. Harry's eyes darted back and forth between them, his bleeding arm raised as if he were ready to strike, and his other arm cradling a pillow against his chest.

"Tell me what you want," the Doctor said after a moment of silence.

"Take it off," Harry answered, with absolute desperation in his voice. "Listen, I'll do whatever you want. Just take it off."

The Doctor took another careful step forward, pointing at the pillow—at whatever it was Harry thought he was holding. "This?"

" _Please!_ "

"Okay, okay. I'll take it off." The Doctor very carefully reached forward, blindly guessing at where he was supposed to disconnect whatever he was taking off, then he carefully began to pull the pillow away. "See? It's coming off."

"Don't you take him!" Harry suddenly snatched the pillow back with such ferocity that the Doctor actually jumped back.

He waited a moment, holding his hands up again to show he wasn't a threat. Wilf tried to hide himself as best as he could, keeping just one eye peeking into the room.

"Remember our deal?" the Doctor began again. "You have to do what I ask."

"What?" Harry screamed at him. "What do you want?"

"Just this," the Doctor slowly reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a capped syringe. "Take this and inject yourself with it. In your arm is fine."

"Will it kill me?"

The Doctor shook his head and held the syringe out in his hand. "You know it's not that simple."

To his amazement, Harry actually took the syringe from the Doctor's hand and jabbed it into his own arm. When he was done he threw the syringe across the room and clung to the pillow protectively, covering it with his own blood.

"I've called the Doctor," Harry growled breathlessly as the Doctor backed away towards the door. "He will kill you for this."

The Doctor snatched up the syringe off the floor and then darted out the door with Wilfred. He used his screwdriver to lock Harry inside and then stopped to take a few deep breaths. From the look on the Doctor's face, Wilf was sure that he had noticed the same thing he had, but he couldn't help but mention it.

"Doctor, he didn't say  _it_ ," Wilf couldn't get the words out in more than a whisper. "He said  _him_."

Harry screamed again from the other side of the door. But the scream Wilf heard was not one of physical pain.

"He thinks it's a child," the Doctor whispered back, running his hands through his hair and turning back and forth like he didn't know what to do with himself. " _He thinks it's a child_. But . . . he never  _had_  children. I never thought—I . . . I didn't—"

"Okay, okay, listen here." Wilfred grabbed the Doctor's arm to stop his pacing. "Everyone's upset and it won't do any good. We can't help him until the medicine takes effect."

"He called me," the Doctor continued, his voice beginning to strain as he pulled an old and empty-looking leather wallet from his jacket pocket. "Wilfred, he literally  _prayed_  for me to help him and I didn't go."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I mean we were at war.  _Everyone_  was calling me for help, and I couldn't answer them all. If I had known—"

"You didn't know," Wilf interrupted sternly. "And you're here now, helping him. That's all that matters. Now we are going to the kitchen, having a cup of tea, and calming ourselves down. We'll take care of this when Harry is settled and safe."

The Doctor made a few feeble attempts at argument, but Wilf wouldn't even let him finish a sentence. He had been to war himself and he knew what happened to men who let themselves become consumed by guilt. They had their hands full with Harry alone, so he wasn't about to let the Doctor fall apart too.

They spent a very dismal twenty minutes in the kitchen. Wilf made tea for them both but neither of them drank it. Wilf kept replaying the scene in his head, remembering all too clearly a look of the worst desperation he'd ever seen. The Doctor kept glancing at the orange clock on the wall, eyes wide and full of sadness.

He wondered if the Doctor knew what Harry meant by 'take it off' if he thought he was holding a child, but decided it was probably best not to ask. If the Doctor did know, he probably didn't want to discuss it and, if he didn't know, he would probably begin imagining it. Neither scenario would help.

When they neared the twenty minute mark, he set the kettle again. Once a new cup of tea had been made for Harry, the two left the kitchen in glum silence. The Doctor made a quick stop to collect a medical kit for treating the wound on Harry's arm, and they carried on. Luckily, they had been keeping food in Harry’s room for situations just like this, and Wilfred hoped beyond hope that Harry had found some and eaten something.

The Doctor stood outside the bedroom door for a long time, listening, before he brought out his screwdriver to unlock it. When he pushed the door open they found Harry sitting on the floor, still clutching the blood-covered pillow to his chest and breathing heavily. His face was red and his eyes bore the unmistakable signs of old tears, but it seemed that the worst had passed.

Harry looked up at the two in the doorway and muttered miserably, "Doctor . . ."

Without hesitation the Doctor flew into the room. In the blink of an eye he was on the floor next to Harry, arms wrapped protectively around him and holding him close. The Doctor began to speak to him softly, but Wilfred couldn't understand the words. He assumed it must have been in the language of their homeworld, as the Doctor had told him that was the only language that the ship didn't translate.

Harry stayed quiet and listened, his head hidden under the Doctor's chin and against his chest, seemingly focused on breathing over anything else. After a few minutes Harry finally responded with a few words of his own in the strange language. The Doctor nodded his head and moved one of his hands to gesture to Wilfred, inviting him into the room.

Wilf set the tea down on the dresser and sat down on the other side of Harry. After a moment, the Doctor mouthed to him to take the pillow. He really didn't want to, but after another encouraging nod from the Doctor, he reached out for it. He managed to slip it almost half way out before Harry's grip on it tightened.

"Don't!"

The Doctor quickly began speaking to him again in calm and soothing tones. His one hand came to rest on Harry's head, keeping him close, as the other hand joined Wilfred's on the pillow. Wilf watched Harry's eyes as the two of them slowly pulled the pillow from his grasp, full of confusion and devastation.

"He can still see it, but he knows it's not real now," the Doctor muttered quietly, in English now. "Let's just give him some time."

Wilfred carefully laid the pillow on the floor where Harry could still see it, those brown eyes refusing to leave it for even a second. Wilf remained frozen, waiting for further instruction, as the room filled up with the tense silence. After a few more moments, Harry gave a small and uncertain nod of his head.

"Cover it up, Wilf," the Doctor whispered, still holding on to the other Time Lord. "There's a blanket just there. Cover it up, quickly."

He was very gentle with his movements, treating the pillow as though it were a real person as he carefully laid a blanket over top of it. Once it was out of sight he heard Harry take in a sharp breath and hold it for a moment.

"It's just a pillow," he finally breathed out. "I'm in the TARDIS, and it's just a pillow."

"That's right," Wilf answered softly.

"Am—am I dying?"

"No. Absolutely not," the Doctor answered firmly, giving him another squeeze. "It's all okay now."

"It's okay," Harry repeated. "I'm okay. That's just a pillow and I'm not . . . am I really bleeding?"

At this point the Doctor looked up, seeming slightly embarrassed. "Well, uh, it seems you bit yourself."

Harry stopped to look at the wound. "Of course I did."

The bite was deep, producing generous amounts of blood that had begun to clot thickly in the enormous gashes. It was already swollen, exaggerating the ragged bits of flesh as they were pushed upward, and looked red with irritation. Looking at it seemed to have a calming effect over Harry and his breathing slowed. The Doctor finally loosened his grip on the other man.

"Where's Lucy?"

"Lucy's dead."

"Did I die?"

"Not today."

"Is that tea for me?"

Wilf was a bit startled to have a question directed at him, but he quickly grabbed the tea from the dresser and pushed it into Harry's open hand. "Thought you might like a pick-me-up."

"I would, thanks." He smiled, despite his red eyes, and looked back at the covered pillow on the floor. "How did I escape?"

The way the Doctor smiled told Wilf that he was aching on the inside. "I don't know," he answered. "You were too clever and escaped without me."

". . . I'll remember."

The longer they kept Harry talking, the more he calmed down. He sat still as the Doctor patched up his arm, not wanting to risk using accelerators until Harry's mind had stabilized. He sat rather happily and drank his tea, asking random questions as they occurred to him. Twice he forgot what had happened to his arm and tried to lift the bandage to see what was underneath.

With a little more time, some coaxing, and a bit of guidance, they got him to the kitchen and had him properly fed. His sanity returned very quickly after that, but he was still not quite himself. Wilfred watched as the Doctor made attempts to be friendly—striking up random conversation, offering to play cards or to go to the lab with Harry. Harry was gracious when he declined any offers given to him, but he declined them all the same.

Wilfred decided that perhaps it was the Doctor who was the problem. While his behaviour was welcoming now, for the past week he had been rather distant, and he wondered if that was causing a rift now. He waited until it was nearing Harry's next meal time and asked the Doctor to cook something fresh, attempting to keep him away long enough for a decent conversation. He wanted to know what had gone wrong, and what needed to be patched up.

Harry was clever though, or else he had read Wilf's mind. The moment the Doctor was out of the room, he looked Wilfred right in the eyes.

"I can't imagine what you think you can do about it."

Wilfred smiled kindly at him and sat down. "I didn't say I would do anything. I just want to know if it's possible."

"It was a medical slip-up," Harry answered with an exasperated tone. "That is exactly why you were brought on to the ship. It wasn't so we could throw sleep over parties and play crib all day. He brought you because he's a doctor, I'm a patient, and he wanted an assistant. That's it."

"I usually consider a doctor's job, or a doctor's assistant for that matter, to include emotional well being. He can't very well be doing his job right if you two are barely talking to each other."

Harry narrowed his eyes at him, but his mouth twitched into a half smile for just a second. "We're not angry with each other, if that's what you're thinking. The Doctor just wants his space."

"How do we fix that?"

"Sometimes I want my space too, you know."

"I've been doing some reading," Wilf said. "I've read about the things you've done. I've talked about them with the Doctor too. He seems to me to be the sort of man who forgives a man looking for redemption. I think he knows that you mean the things you've been saying . . . about wanting to make things better."

"Look, Wilf, you're just going to have to get over it." He had been set on edge the entire day since his attack, and it was beginning to show again. "Some wounds take longer to heal than others. It's as simple as that."

And there it was. "Which wounds?"

Harry shook his head with an annoyed sigh. "One you won't have read about."

"No, it's not in a book, is it?" Wilf smiled knowingly. "But I think I know what it might be. The Doctor told me about your last battle with him. You should hear the way he tells the story."

"I can imagine."

"His great nemesis, the Master, tricked and betrayed all those people. Took over the planet, killed millions, even kept the Doctor as a dog to kick when you felt like it." He shrugged his shoulders as he said it, remembering how commonplace it all had seemed to the Doctor when he told him. "But then, the very worst crime of all. Something so unthinkable, Harold, that after forgiving you for everything else, he simply can't forgive  _that_."

"I know!" Harry barked suddenly, flaring up with anger. "You think I don't know? I've known him for  _centuries_ , old man! Before your grandfather's grandfather was breathing life I knew that man better than he knew himself! Do you  _really_  dare to think you know better than I?"

"I know that we both know what it was," he spoke softly and smiled with kindness, hoping to calm the other man. "You didn't regenerate."

"I didn't regenerate," Harry hissed, kicking his foot at nothing in particular. "I didn't regenerate! That's why he won't . . . he'll never trust me, Wilfred." The anger in him deflated very quickly and his eyes took on a look of sadness instead. "There's nothing I can do about it. I can't change it. He will  _never_ —and trust me, I know him—he will never forget watching me die, smiling up at him. ' _I win_ ' I said, like an absolute moron! To him, that's the worst thing I've ever done in all my long life, and he . . . he will never forgive me for it."

Wilf smiled again, glad to see that Harry was at least more willing to talk about the important things than the Doctor was. It certainly made these things easier. He found that any time he tried to talk to the Doctor about anything remotely serious, aside from when he thought he was living his last days, he had a tendency to either change the subject, make a silly joke, or simply stop talking.

"Harry," he said happily, clapping a hand on his shoulder. "Then why don't you just tell him the truth?"

Harry looked at him with wide eyes, first looking confused, then pleasantly surprised, and finally proud. A grin spread across his face, for the first time that day, and he threw his head back and laughed.


	15. The Doctor

The Doctor waited patiently for the Master to recover. For a full two days he kept mostly to himself, merely tolerating the presence of others instead of seeking it out. Boris had taken to following him like a lost puppy and some of the TARDIS's other house guests had began asking about him too. The Daughter was fascinated by his cleverness at discovering her, Lilith mentioned how handsome she thought he was at every chance, and Ghanje complained about not being introduced even though the Master was well aware of his presence on the ship.

The Master's self-isolation was only increasing the curiosity of the many watchful eyes in the TARDIS. It wouldn't do, he decided. The last thing he needed was the Master having a ready and willing army available at a moment's notice. Most of the creatures that inhabited the TARDIS were taken on board as prisoners, and while most of them had forgiven and forgotten, the Master was very good at riling up the anger in people and putting it to work.

It was time for a field trip, whether the Master was prepared for it or not.

He had asked Wilfred to pass along the message that they were leaving in two hours. He knew if he told the Master himself it would result in a 'discussion' of some sort, and he simply didn't have the patience for that today. He normally would have just dragged them to the control room and taken off without any notice, but Wilfred wasn't exactly young, and it was going to be very hot where they were going.

"Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate!" he reminded Wilf multiple times. "Lots of water, sunscreen, and light clothes."

When the time came he found Wilf and the Master waiting outside the control room. Wilfred looked both nervous and excited, clutching a bottle of water in his hands. The Master was eying him with what looked like suspicion, but he couldn't imagine why. The two hadn't spoken much since they had that rather intimate encounter in the lab, and the Doctor hadn't been doing anything to justify suspicion.

"Doctor," the Master spoke up, crossing his arms. "Are we a party of four?"

He turned to look behind him, but saw no one. When he looked back, Wilf looked just as confused as he felt, but the Master simply nodded his head towards the floor. Upon his second look he noticed that his shadow didn't look quite right. In some places the edges were too sharp, while in others it was far too blurry, and he seemed to have grown an extra finger on one hand.

"He says you don't take him out enough. He wants to come."

"How do you know?"

The Master didn't answer him because he didn't have to. The Doctor could only communicate with Boris on basic levels, but the Master was a far more advanced telepath who didn't need a physical connection and who had, not very long ago, been a swarm of sorts himself. The man had been perfectly in sync with six billion other copies of himself and hadn't even broken a sweat. Communicating with Boris wouldn't be much more difficult. He found that he felt very annoyed to be smacked in the face with that fact by the Master acting as a translator for him.

"The air is very disruptive where we're going, Boris. It will be difficult for you to keep form and easy to get lost," he said to the shadow, but it didn't move an inch. "Oh, alright. Stay with the Master then."

"He calls me Harry."

He didn't know why he felt so aggravated all of a sudden. He had been excited about leaving the ship up until a few moments ago. He supposed he might have been getting paranoid about the idea of the Master having a better relationship with the beings on the ship. The thought of that was just getting under his skin.

He noticed the look of concern on Wilf's face and forced himself to smile. "Well, looks like we're ready."

He pushed open the door to the control room and led the way inside. The Master, thankfully, quickly found himself a place to stand that was a satisfying distance from the console while still being within plain sight of the Doctor. He kept one eye on him as he started up the engines.

"Where are we going, Doctor?" Wilf asked, grinning from ear to ear as the ship rumbled to life. "The moon?"

"Much further than that," the Doctor grinned in return. " _Allons-y_!"

The ship wailed and shook, but Wilf held on just fine. He watched the Master from the corner of his eye and saw that he didn't move away from his spot, his expertly trained legs keeping in rhythm with the TARDIS with the help of a handrail. When everything came to a halt there was a moment of anticipated silence that followed while Wilf waited for the door to open.

"Have you ever gone on a pilgrimage, Wilf?"

"No, Doctor, I can't say I have."

The Doctor took a few steps towards the door. "This is a sacred place to the Haephsian people. It's the biggest temple in the entire universe and millions of Haephsians travel here every year as part of a very special, religious rite of passage." He glanced over at the Master, and was glad to see an excited twinkle in his eye.

"Godforge," he said with a grin. "I've never been to Godforge."

"I've only been once, but I didn't get a chance to look around." The Doctor barely remembered what it even looked like, he had been so full of fury that day. "Just did a bit of shopping and had to run. But! Today, we will have all the time we need!"

He pushed the door open and the most brilliant light and heat flooded the room. They faced a wall of fire, dancing in glorious ecstasy and roaring with such power that they felt it in their bones.

"Wilfred, this is Godforge," the Doctor said, unable to contain his excitement. "The universe's only colonized star."

They had landed near the edge of the energy field, giving them a perfect view. Once they stepped out of the TARDIS and were able to look around, they could see the stalls and buildings set up behind them.

The Doctor explained as simply as he could how the energy fields worked to keep them safe despite being near the heart of a star, but the Master already knew and Wilf simply gave him an awkward smile and comments along the lines of "Well, that was clever of them". He decided the better option was to explain the history, instead of the science.

The second planet that orbited this particular dwarf star was naturally inhabited by the Haephsian people, a pale yellow, reptilian race. For millennia, their race was particularly rare because their planet bore so little life on the surface that they had to dig into the ground in search of the creatures or fungi that lived just below them in order to survive.

The planet was rich in minerals, and the people had often seen exposed metal ore veins melting in the sheer heat of their sun. So began the process of education, and the people learned to mine and manipulate stronger and stronger metals. With their progressing technology, they buried into the ground where they could raise and grow food with ease.

The sun turned from a burden to a gift, and many Haephsians decided that a god had been trying to teach them the secrets of metalwork all this time. Blacksmithing and other metal works became sacred crafts, handled by the religious heads of the community and their apprentices. They believed that their god must be the first blacksmith, passing on its life-saving works to the Haephsians, and the sun must be its forge.

When the Haephsians made first contact with a species from another planet, and their technology flourished and grew faster than could have been imagined. They learned that all things in the universe were born from the death of a star long ago, and it solidified their faith that their god had created all people in star forges.

When the technology had progressed enough, they made The First Great Pilgrimage to their own sun and constructed the first building ever erected in a star. The temple grew with the years to become a massive complex that could take days to explore, and a community began to build around it.

Now it was a tourist destination as well as being the most holy place in the universe for the majority of Haephsians and a handful of other species. The monks of the temple devoted their lives to learning the art behind forging Astrosteel, Star Eggs (diamonds, to most other planets), and all other forms of metal work. Their creations were prized throughout the universe as being the most beautiful objects while also being nearly unbreakable.

When he had finished his story, the Master let out a chuckle. "Could you imagine being one of the people on the first trip? 'Oh, we're going to the giant ball of raging fire? Fantastic!' "

They had landed near a marketplace, packed with stalls selling every kind of metal items you could imagine. Wilfred wandered from one stall to the next, observing everything from forks and plates to swords and musical instruments. The Master primarily kept his eyes on the energy field surrounding the little town, stopping to kick his foot at the ground a few times to see what it was made of.

"How could you come here just to shop?" the Master asked him once he noticed he was being watched. "What were you buying that could be so important?"

"Chains," he answered simply and truthfully. "I needed something unbreakable."

"For me?"

The Doctor thought he was being serious and quickly opened his mouth to say that he had never intended to chain the Master up, but quickly changed his mind. He saw the mischievous look in those brown eyes and the unrestrained grin and immediately thought back to that day in the lab. He felt his face flush and the Master let out a hearty laugh.

"You make it too easy, you know."

"I know!" the Doctor huffed in return.

"I'd love to see the engines that run this thing," the Master continued, looking up at the sky of fire again. "It reminds me a bit of the sky at home, especially during the war. It's raw power up there. Death and life in an eternal battle for superiority. Beautiful."

The Doctor watched his face carefully, waiting for the joke, for the trick. It wasn't there. He watched the dancing flames with all the awe of a child, and he smiled a smile of true joy. He quite suddenly realized that the sight of the Master smiling so sincerely made him happy. It made him remember the boy he had first met all those years ago.

"Come on." He took a hold of his old friend's hand to lead him away. "You really do look like a tourist standing there, looking up."

They walked together, weaving through the crowds of shoppers to catch up to Wilfred. The Master's fingers gripped his hand strongly and made no attempt to let go or pull away. Even this basic form of affection was upsetting the little paranoid Doctor in the back of his mind, telling him to let go and back off immediately, to not even humour the idea or to take a chance.

He decided that he had been listening to that Doctor for nearly two weeks and it hadn't done him any good. Today, at least, he would do what he wanted to.

They found Wilfred studying a very delicate looking flute, formed out of Astrosteel and lined with blue diamonds. The stall's keeper was in the middle of telling him about how the instrument was completely unbreakable, abruptly dropping the flute on the counter top and smashing it with a large hammer.

"See? Not a scratch."

The Haephsian shopkeeper was nearly seven feet tall but incredibly slender. The yellow scales were clothed in a skin-tight blue jumpsuit, while fingers and tail were decorated in all manner of metal jewellery. A long, thin tail waved enthusiastically as the flute's creation was described in detail.

The Doctor leaned forward to mutter in Wilf's ear that he could easily gain access to funds if he wanted some souvenirs, but Wilf didn't answer him. Instead he thanked the shopkeeper and waited for them to look the other way before whispering in a stressed tone.

"How do I tell if it's a man or not?"

"I probably should have explained that," the Doctor chuckled. "They don't really have a gender—there’s only one kind of Haephsian."

"Then what do I say? He, she, sir? Surely not  _it_?"

"Say whatever you want, the TARDIS will translate. You're speaking Haephsian to them, so they'll hear the appropriate words."

That seemed to relieve him a bit. "So I can say 'he' then? That won't offend anyone?"

It took a little practice before Wilf became comfortable enough to talk to some of the locals without worrying about offending them, but he got there eventually. The Master pulled him all about the marketplace, expressing a particular fondness for the vast assortment of Astrosteel daggers to be found. He never let go of the Doctor's hand.

In the end, he decided he would bring a dagger home for the Master and just make sure that he didn't keep it in his bedroom or the lab. The last thing they needed was the Master having access to a weapon the next time his mind slipped into madness.

After some more exploring of the marketplace they made their way to the massive temple. The building had a bronze glow to it and its shape was reminiscent of termite mounds. The giant entrance arch was carved with hundreds of tiny figures, depicting Haephsians in scenes of worship, agriculture, and most other forms of work. Once they stepped inside, the Doctor realized that the bronze of the building really  _was_  glowing, and it lit up the interior with a strange rippling light that mimicked the fire outside.

By now he'd seen Wilfred look at their joined hands twice, but the old man didn't say a thing and continued smiling. He wasn't even sure why he was still holding the Master's hand, especially now that they were inside and the crowd had thinned out considerably. It just felt nice to feel someone else's fingers entwined with his own again.

They wandered toward the sound of singing. Songs in deep voices that mimicked the waving roar of flame, and high voices that rang like the clash of steel. They sang prayers of thanks for the womb of the planet provided to keep their people safe, thanks for the gifts of knowledge that allowed them to reach the skies, and pleas to keep their sacred star burning for all of time.

The priests wore red suits made of an extremely thick animal hide and Astrosteel masks with beautiful designs etched of stars and flame covered their eyes as they sang their prayers. The apprentices wore plain black clothing, with chest plate covers made of the same red hide, the temple's sigil of a crossed hammer and trident in front of a star was burned into the leather. Even without the identifying clothes, the servants of the temple were easy to spot because they were all incredibly muscular compared to other, slender-bodied Haephsians. Chests and arms boasted of their unwavering devotion to their god, of the sweat and care given to their sacred craft.

Before the crowd of singing worshippers stood a great pillar of fire that waved and danced, seemingly in response to the voices. Suddenly the Doctor noticed the flame seemed to be dancing with a shadow, rippling beautifully together. Boris had apparently been taken by the splendor of it all.

An apprentice approached them and bowed his head low. "Would anyone like to partake in worship?"

In a heartbeat the Master raised his free hand. "I do."

"Excellent," the apprentice smiled. "Have you participated before?"

"No. We're all new here."

"I'm sure you will enjoy the experience. I will go over some rules of safety with you before we begin. Please, follow me."

The Master let go of the Doctor's hand and clapped Wilfred on the shoulder instead. "Come along, Grandfather," he said happily before following the apprentice. "Boris!"

Wilf looked back at the Doctor with a slightly worried look on his face. "What do they mean by 'worship'? We're not going to sing, are we?" Boris's wispy shadow drifted past them, catching up to the Master.

"It's like a workshop," the Doctor answered as they began to walk. "A lot of tourists come here, so they have little metalwork lessons where they teach you how to make something simple. To tourists it's just something fun to do, but to the native people here it's a form of worship."

He noticed Wilf was intentionally walking slowly, creating some distance between them and the other three. "So, Doctor . . . When I was reading the books you gave me, I noticed that the section on reproduction and . . . well, you know,  _relations_ , was quite large. I took a quick look, and it talked about your species being evolved enough to reproduce regardless of gender."

"Yes," the Doctor raised an eyebrow. "When we regenerate, it's possible to change genders. When your wife or husband could regenerate into a different gender any day, you tend not to care too much about it. Eventually our bodies caught up with our minds and allowed for adaptable reproduction."

"If it's not too personal, Doctor, does that mean you've been a woman before?"

"Where are you going with this, Wilf?"

"Well, I was just thinking," he hurried the words out. "This whole time I thought Harry was just worried about your friendship, but it's just dawned on me that it might be a bit more complicated than that. If you're the last two of your species, maybe he was hoping to . . . well, um, be . . . together?"

The Doctor couldn't help but grin at the amazing blush on Wilf's face. "You think he fancies me, Wilfred?"

"He didn't say anything to me!" Wilf spluttered out. "I just thought it could be possible. He was holding your hand, and he seems so awfully upset sometimes that you don't always get along. I mean, if I were the last human in the universe, I would think it would be terribly lonely."

"And what exactly is it that you want me to do?"

Wilf smiled awkwardly and scratched his chin. "Just . . . keep your mind open maybe?"

Well, he could have expected much worse than that from a 20th century human.

"It's good of you to be concerned, Wilf," he explained slowly, being sure to keep his voice down. "But I don't think that can happen between us. I'm sure we will be friends again, and we are getting there, but I don't think I have it in me to put that much trust in him. He knows that."

"Is it because he didn't regenerate?" Wilf asked sadly. "He said you told him you forgave him for the other things he did that day. But then he didn't regenerate . . ."

The Doctor felt a cold settle over him at the thought of it, and his jaw set firmly in place. "He chose not to regenerate because he knew that was what I wanted. What kind of a man chooses to die in order to hurt someone else, Wilf? Would you trust a person like that with your feelings?"

"I've been thinking about that too, Doctor," Wilf answered slowly, his eyes wide and eager. "And I brought it up with Harry, but he said you wouldn't want to talk about it with him. But will you listen to me?"

"I can listen, but I won't promise you'll get an answer you like."

"That's fair. It just all seemed too strange to me. We've seen him, when his medicine is late or doesn't work . . . he's been through terrible things, Doctor. Truly horrific things. But I've been reading the book about him, and from the things I've heard, I've never met a man who fought harder to keep living than Harry."

"He's done some truly horrific things to other people in order to do that, Wilf."

"Exactly!" Wilf exclaimed. "He's killed, and stolen bodies, and spent years and years chasing immortality. He endured pain I can't even imagine, where I think many men would ask for death, and he still regenerated and fought for his life. Do you really think that someone who is that desperate to live would simply throw it away on a whim?"

The Doctor's pace slowed a little as he processed that thought. "He had a plan . . . he told his followers how to bring him back."

"But even that! Why would he make that plan? Was he planning to die instead of regenerate that far ahead of time?"

"Well . . . I'm sure it was just a back-up plan."

"Even so, the plan meant he lost complete control of the situation. What if they couldn't get to his DNA? What if they didn't get his ring? What if you found out and stopped them? What if they got the ritual wrong? There are just too many variables for a man like Harry to put absolute trust in. I really can't imagine a man like him  _choosing_  to take that chance if he didn't have to."

The Doctor stopped walking. He looked at Wilfred as he felt the dawning of truth. "You're right . . . it doesn't make sense."

Wilf nodded his head solemnly. "I would think that a man like Harry would want to feel in control no matter what, especially when he was so sick. So, if he were dying, why wouldn't he pretend it was because he had chosen to? I'm sure it made him feel better."

He made the back-up plan because he didn't have any regenerations left. Why hadn't he thought of that? He had been so wrapped in the shock and disbelief that the Master thought life with him would be too terrible to be worth living, that he never stopped to think about whether it was true or not. He really did get stupid when he was emotional.

Wilfred was looking at him with an almost patronizing smile, and he suddenly felt extremely embarrassed.

"We all make mistakes," the Doctor muttered, trying to regain his composure as he began walking again. "Some of us more than others."


	16. The Doctor

After a lengthy lesson in the importance of wearing all safety gear, demonstrations on how to handle molten metal, and the correct use of the energy field airlocks, the group began their first attempts at smithing. There were several apprentices that wandered around the class, keeping an eye on the twenty or so people participating and stopping frequently to give corrections or help.

The Doctor had no difficulty with the process, but he was finding it a bit hard to concentrate. He kept replaying the event of the Master's death over and over again in his head, looking for a hole in Wilf's theory. He couldn't find any.

He remembered it so clearly, and there was no doubt in his mind that he hadn't seen the slightest shimmer of gold as the Master died. Even if he had chosen not to regenerate, his body's natural reflexes should have at least caused a little bit of time energy to release. It would be like trying not to blink with a strong wind in your face, or trying not to cough if something were caught in your throat. He could have stopped the regeneration, but he couldn't possibly have done it so perfectly.

He stole a glance at the Master working at a table a few feet away and calculated the possibilities. The Doctor himself had lost a body during the war, and he'd seen others lose many more. How many did the Master lose in battle? He knew he'd been taken captive and punished with a death when he attempted to escape.

" _It took me five tries before I escaped properly."_

When he had seen the Master's dream and come face-to-face with that girl, he remembered being struck by her eyes the most. They were cold and cruel, and full of a ruthless hatred he hadn't seen in a long time. How many times had she killed him? What else had they done to him while he was captive? It probably would have been easy to burn through eleven regenerations during the war, escaping with just one left.

He remembered after his intrusion in the Master's mind how sick he had been. Thrown into full panic, trying to regenerate, and becoming physically ill, his mind had been whirlwind of emotion and confusion. He remembered Wilf coming to speak to him afterwards, with his old eyes brimmed with tears and his face fixed in a look of pure misery.

" _He's sleeping now but, oh Doctor, that was awful! The poor boy was so frightened. He kept saying that he doesn't want to die, and when I tell him he won't, he doesn't believe me."_

Afraid to die, even now. He'd always known that the Master was a survivor to the core. How could he have been so stupid? How did he not see that the pieces simply didn't fit?

Suddenly the Master looked up at him and met his eyes. They looked at each other for a long moment, and the Doctor wondered if he had heard any of his thoughts.

"Do we need to talk again?"

The Master's lips hadn't moved, but he clearly heard his voice. He wasn't sure what to do. The room was so loud that he'd have to shout in order for the Master to hear him, and he didn't really want the Master poking into his thoughts to fish out a message.

"Just imagine yourself speaking out loud to me. I should hear it."

Wilfred was watching them now, and he realized they had been staring at each other for too long to go unnoticed. The Master quickly looked back down and resumed his work, carving the mould he would use later. The Doctor followed his lead and began working on his own project again.

_ Why would we talk here? _

"You're staring at me. You're thinking about me. I could hear your thoughts buzzing about from all the way over here. Something must be on your mind."

_ I don't want to talk here. Especially like this. _

"Is it because of what happened two days ago?"

The Doctor flicked his eyes up to look at the Master's arm. The bite was still bandaged up. Even after he had returned to himself, the Master had refused any accelerators or advanced medicine for the wound. He'd asked for just enough to keep away infection and to stop the bleeding, but he wanted the rest to heal on its own. He had refused to give a reason why.

"We haven't talked about it yet. I don't remember what I said or what I did in detail. I have a basic idea of what happened."

The Doctor remembered the way the Master had clung to that pillow as if it were the world itself.

"You don't want to ask?"

_ I don't want to know the answer. _

He stole another glance at the Master. He looked completely consumed in his work, carefully adding the intricate details to his carving. He didn't know how he was able to look so focused when he was transmitting a conversation in his head.

_ Whose boy was it? _

"I thought you didn't want to know?"

"Harry?" Wilf's voice cut through the silence. "Can you come have a look at this?"

The Master glanced up to meet his eyes and smile before he turned away. The Doctor watched him walk over to the other table as Wilf pointed out different parts of his design. He watched as the Master chatted and smiled and laughed, as if there wasn't a thing in the universe to bother him. He would never guess, if he hadn't already known, that he was looking at a man who had died countless times, endured unthinkable pain, or suffered a mental illness for centuries. What else did he hide behind that easy smile?

With some difficulty, he pushed the burning questions from his mind and worked on finishing his carving. An apprentice came over when he was finished to help him turn his simple design into an actual blade. He had designed it thin and curved, like a talon from some giant bird, and he was quite happy with the look once it was properly formed in star-forged steel. The apprentice showed him how to wrap the handle with leather and added a single red diamond to the butt of the handle.

"It is tradition to add at least one Star Egg to any tool," the apprentice explained. "It allows the god to channel its energy through it, that you may be blessed for your worship."

The temple taught the metal work classes without charge and provided materials, but you needed to pay for the materials if you wanted to take the finished product home. The Doctor secured the necessary funds with the help of his screwdriver so that they could leave with their creations, especially considering how much work Wilfred had put into the hummingbird brooch he'd made for his daughter.

The Master had carved a flat steel plate and used the ground dust of many different coloured diamonds to create an image of a nebula in space. The Doctor was impressed with how cleverly he had used the dust and small fragments of diamonds to create the stars and coloured swirls. It looked like a snapshot taken straight from space, and the dust made it shimmer most beautifully in the light. The Doctor thought it looked vaguely familiar, but he'd been to so many places in all his years that he couldn't remember every nebula he'd ever seen.

"Why that picture?" the Doctor asked curiously.

"I just thought it might look good on the wall," the Master said with a shrug of his shoulders as the apprentices carefully wrapped up his piece. "It's a bit dull in my room really."

Wilf nodded his head. "Could use a bit o' sprucing up in there."

They waited until the apprentices had finished with their items, wrapping each one in leather as lovingly as if they were swaddling babies. Finally, they gathered their things and gave their thanks before moving on, leaving the apprentices to prepare for the next class.

"What should we do now?" the Doctor asked, looking at the many items on display from previous classes as they walked.

The Master asked to go back to the ship for a while, or to at least leave Godforge. The heat was becoming a bit much for him and he was starting to feel a bit unwell. Wilfred quickly agreed that a break from the heat would be nice but made certain to assure the Doctor that it wasn't because he wasn't having a good time.

The Doctor was actually glad to hear it. The heat in Godforge was nothing to be joked about, especially for a Time Lord—even the heat on Earth could be a bit much for them sometimes.

When they made their way back to the TARDIS, they immediately headed for the kitchen. Forging metal in the heart of a star made hungry work, and it was plain to see by the Master's face that he was starting to feel it. They sat him at the counter with a bowl of almonds to keep him going until dinner was ready.

The Doctor was just gathering ingredients when Wilf very abruptly stood up.

"I, er, have to go to the bathroom," he announced a little too loudly, placing his hand on his belly as he made a quick break for the door. "Oh, those fish fingers from lunch aren't agreeing with me. I'll probably be a while."

The Doctor waited for the door to close before he shot a scowl at the Master. "What was that about?"

The Master shrugged and popped another almond in his mouth. "The man has to use the bathroom. What's your problem?"

"Did you tell him to leave?"

"Did you hear me say anything?"

He narrowed his eyes. "You know what I mean."

"Then yes, I asked him to leave." His eyes bore into the Doctor in a way that felt like a challenge.

He felt angry all of a sudden. He was angry that the Master was getting along so famously with his friends. He was angry that he couldn't hide himself from the other Time Lord. He was angry that it felt like he was being  _handled_. He was angry that, somewhere in time, a child had died because he had been too busy to answer a call for help. He was angry that it had felt so comforting to hold the Master’s hand. He was angry that the Master could trick him so easily.

"You're a right stupid git, you know that?" he spat venomously. "You think you're so clever. You think you know so much more than I do. I've got news for you, Master,  _you_  are an absolute  _idiot_."

He had expected the Master to fight. He  _wanted_  a fight. The man before him was the creator of travesties, the orchestrator of mass murder, and the biggest pain in his ass for over six hundred years. Was he supposed to just forget all that? Was he supposed to put his arms around him and tell him all was forgiven just because it hadn't been his choice to die after all?

The way the Master was simply staring at him was even more infuriating. He looked perfectly calm, and he hadn't said anything to contest the Doctor's insults or defend himself. Of course he didn't have anything to say. What  _could_  he say? He had done one wrong thing after another for nearly his entire life. How dare he even think he could defend such atrocities?

"Don't think I don't know what you're doing—getting all friendly with Wilfred, trying to convince me you're all heartsick. You've been trying to manipulate this whole situation from the start," the words poured from his mouth before he could even think about them, his rage driven by the brown eyes watching him so stoically. "It's the same old game with you, isn't it? Take people's emotions, people's  _love_ , and turn it against them. Break our defenses down to make us weak, and then you slip in with your little schemes to take over. Not this time, Master. I won't—"

What happened next was so fast that the Doctor didn't even have a chance to react. He had been so busy working himself up that he hadn't seen the Master shifting positions in his seat, nor seen his pupils dilate in preparation for action. He didn't even see the attack coming, all he knew was quite suddenly a heavy weight slammed into him.

The Master had leapt over the counter separating them and pinned the Doctor against the counter behind him. His spine was being forced backwards in a way that was awkward and painful, his head thumped against the cabinetry, and there was a sharp pressure against his throat. He heard the clatter of his sonic screwdriver being tossed across the floor, and the Master's body weight was pressed against him tightly, making it difficult to move. His hands were free, but he didn't dare move them while he could still feel cold steel against his skin.

"This is how easy it is, Doctor," the Master's voice hissed in his ear, so close he could feel the heat of his breath. "You like to do things the long way—be clever, reprogram things, trick people, a hostile takeover with no hostility. But this is how easy it is." The knife pressed a little harder against his skin, and he could feel the blood trickling out. "We both fought in the war, but how many men did you kill with your bare hands? Did you do the things that I had to do? You fight with words and morality, Doctor, but I fight with blood on my hands and skin in my teeth. All that stands between me and this ship is you, and  _this_  is how easy it is to kill you. What's to stop me right now?"

He felt his hearts beating out of control, his lungs going into overdrive. He had been worried about the Master having easy access to a dagger, but he had never worried about a simple kitchen knife snatched off of a counter top. He wished he had thought of that now that one of those kitchen knives was a mere flick of the wrist away from ending him.

"Stop," he barely breathed the word out. "Please, stop."

"Why should I!?" the Master snarled, and the knife cut slightly deeper. "I'm a madman, remember? I'm only here to kill you and take the ship, right? I don't need you to nurse me to health any longer. Why wait? This is my chance, right here, right now—you tell me why I shouldn't look into your eyes and watch the life drain out of them!"

He felt the fear seeping into him now, trying desperately to remember the last time he'd seen the Master take his medication. The look in his eyes was wild and animalistic—the eyes of an experienced killer. He felt like he was looking down the jaws of a lion, and he had no doubt in his mind that the Master had killed men like this before. What if he was slipping into madness? That was why they had come back after all. What if they were too late?

He couldn't breathe. He couldn't move. He couldn't think. Everything felt like it was shutting down in the sheer panic of it all.

"I'll tell you why." Those hunter's eyes stared into his very soul as the words slithered out from between the Master's lips. "Because I am not that man anymore."

Suddenly all the pressure disappeared. The Doctor staggered forward a step, using the counter top to hold himself up as he coughed, trying to get his breath back. His legs quaked underneath him and threatened to give out. He could see droplets of blood splattering on the floor beneath him. A cloth was pushed into his hand and he quickly brought it up to press against the wound on his neck.

After catching his breath and making sure that he would stay standing upright, the Doctor looked up again. The Master had gone back to his seat and resumed calmly eating almonds, although now he wore a slight frown on his face.

"Why didn't you tell me?" the Doctor asked, hearing his own voice quiver. "Why didn't you just tell me that you couldn't regenerate? I could have helped you."

"You did," the Master answered simply, the deadly hiss in his voice had vanished without a trace. "You cried for me. You begged me to stay. You wouldn't have done that if you knew I would die anyway—you would have wanted me to think everything was okay. When your own wife shoots you, all you want is to know that at least one person will be sad to see you go. I died knowing that someone would miss me."

He swallowed hard, feeling the bite of the cut on his throat and a stinging in his eyes. "You broke my heart, you know that?"

The Master nodded slowly in return. "That was the point—finding out if I still could." Then he smiled ever so slightly. "Good thing you have a spare."

The Doctor shifted from one foot to the other, watching every muscle movement in the other man's face for a sign. "I'm sorry."

The Master looked up and met his eyes again, full of bittersweet emotion. "Me too."

"Well, then," he said, smiling awkwardly, trying to pretend that he didn't notice the increasing wetness of the cloth in his hand. ". . . Here we are."

The Master smiled at him—a real smile this time—and pushed the bowl of almonds towards him in offering. "Here we are."


	17. The Master

The Master felt bad that the Doctor's neck had bled so much, and he was sure he would not have pressed quite so hard if he hadn't been so hungry, but at least he had gotten his point across. The Doctor was sometimes too busy thinking and overanalyzing life, as if it were some almighty chess match, that he often forgot that it was so much more than that. In reality, if the Master had intended to kill anyone or take the ship, he could have achieved it long ago.

If there was anything he had learned from the war, it was to never underestimate your enemy and to take whatever chances you were given. The war the Master fought had left no room for words or cleverness—that's what got him caught four times. In the end, he had to buy his freedom with sheer brutality. He had felt the crunching collapse of skulls beneath the strength of his blow, felt necks twist and snap in his grasp, and when he finally got his hands on a weapon he felt such a torrent of hot blood wash over him that he imagined himself to be baptized, and brought to life anew.

The Doctor would simply never expect something as simple as knife to the throat from someone he considered clever. On the day of his escape, many people had died for making that very same mistake.

It was an important lesson to learn, and he would rather the Doctor learn it now than on a day when it really mattered. He did not regret his actions, but he did feel a pang of guilt as he watched the Doctor using a cloth to mop up the blood from the floor.

He helped to clean the wound and apply an ointment the Doctor kept handy in the kitchen's first aid kit that would close it up in twenty minutes or so. It would still need time to heal properly, but at least they wouldn't have to worry about it re-opening or getting infected.

When everything was back to a normal state, aside from the slash in the Doctor's neck, they decided Wilfred could come back. By then, the Master was unable to focus enough to send out a telepathic message. He felt slightly light-headed and a little bit weak. The almonds he was eating were helping to slow the process, but it wasn't enough. He needed food. He needed  _meat_.

Without a word of explanation, the Doctor pulled a cold ham from the fridge and dropped it on the counter top in front of him. He must have said something strange, and the Doctor knew well enough now to feed him the second that started happening. He tried to say thank you, but the words came out sounding like total gibberish and he wasn't sure if he had said them correctly or not, but he used his hands to tear into the ham.

Suddenly the Doctor had vanished, but he didn't remember him leaving or saying when he would be back. He could see the bandage on his arm turning a deep red, but knew that he must be imagining it. The bite hadn't bled since the day he inflicted it upon himself, and he had done nothing to his arm to open it again. His mind was playing tricks, he knew, and he was determined not to fall for it today.

He focused on eating, letting the sweet taste of meat hold his attention. But he couldn't help seeing the bandage from the corner of his eye, slowly soaking through, until the blood began to seep out and trickle down his arm.

 _The bite is real_ , he told himself sternly, _but the blood is not_.

His mind pulled him back to the memory of the first time he had done such a thing. He could taste the blood on his tongue and hear the sound of his own flesh tearing between his teeth, his arm seared with phantom pain.

 _It's not real_ , he repeated in his head over and over again. He reminded himself that he was in the TARDIS, and that he was safe. As long as he kept eating, it would pass.

It was extremely difficult, but he managed to stay in his seat. He felt the panic rise from the back of his mind, felt the overwhelming urge to run, felt the burning itch of the long lost stitches in his chest. He tried to remember working in his lab, and Wilfred's vanilla tea, and the way it had felt to have the Doctor's lips against his own.

For a moment he forgot which one was the dream, but then the wave of confusion suddenly swept away. He hadn't moved from his seat, he hadn't thrown anything or hurt himself. He was just sitting at the kitchen counter, calmly eating chunks of cold ham.

He stole a glance at the bandage on his arm, just to be sure. It was perfectly clean.

The Doctor returned a moment later with Wilfred in tow and went back to making dinner. He knew that they had all been chatting together, and he had a very distinct memory of the Doctor's hand gently brushing the back of his neck when he walked past his chair, but the rest was a bit of a blur.

Eventually a meal was placed before him and he dove into it. With Wilfred on one side of him and the Doctor on the other, they ate together in silence while his mind stabilized. They were almost finished when Wilfred stood up to put the kettle on and asked the question that the Doctor had been too afraid to ask.

"So, Harry, did you ever have children?"

He heard the Doctor choke on whatever he'd just put in his mouth, cough, and quickly blurt out an answer. "No, he didn't."

The Doctor didn't want to know. He had even admitted that. But the Master had decided that there was no point in playing such games.

"Thank you, Doctor, for reminding me of the events of my own life," he said with a sarcastic smile. "Why, if I didn't have you around I'm quite sure I would forget things as trivial as whether I had children or not."

But the Doctor was determined. "I was actually thinking, Wilf, that for our next trip—"

"I had three."

The silence that followed could only be described as awkward. Wilf looked at him with his mouth slightly open, as if he were trying to think of something to say but couldn't figure out what. The Doctor seemed completely frozen, staring at his nearly empty plate and not saying a word.

"Your desperate need for secrecy can be truly irritating, Doctor," he muttered before looking back up at Wilfred and doing his best to smile. "I had three children. A girl and two boys—Kahlia, Berran, and the youngest was killed before he was named. I was never able to think of anything afterwards. Of course, they're all gone now."

"Oh, Harry." Those big blue eyes threatened to tear up and a wrinkled hand reached out for the Master's. "I'm so sorry, you poor lad. I really shouldn't have asked."

He made sure to keep smiling. "It was a long time ago, Grandfather. You can ask me what you like."

There was another odd silence, but he knew exactly what they were thinking. He saw Wilf's eyes travel to the Doctor, looking for some sort of permission, while the Doctor's eyes stayed firmly glued to his plate. He wanted the Doctor to ask. He wanted the other Time Lord to learn that they could talk to each other like they used to. He wanted him to learn that there didn't need to be so many questions without answers.

After a long and tense moment, the Doctor finally spoke.

"The boy was yours."

The Master nodded his head slowly and made sure to keep his voice steady. "You already knew that, Doctor."

"The boy who—?" Wilfred couldn't finish the sentence, and instead gestured at the bandage on the Master's arm.

He looked down at the bandage too and remembered that day carefully. "Yes, that boy. My captor thought it would be fitting for me to learn a lesson in caring for another being, and losing them." He paused, carefully watching their reactions to see if he should stop. "He had just turned three. One day they drugged me, and when I woke up they had sewn us together, like conjoined twins, just like this." He brought up his arm as if he were holding a sleeping child against his chest. "So I could never put him down, they said. And then they left us."

He stopped, seeing the look of horror on Wilf's face. Maybe he had said too much. The last time he had even mentioned any of his children he had said too much, and Lucy cried for nearly an hour. He didn't really understand why at the time—after all, he had lived it, while she was only hearing about it. Now he understood.

"Go on," the Doctor said quietly. "Tell us what happened."

Wilf nodded, though his eyes were full of misery. "It's good to let it out, Harry."

Suddenly the image of Berran leapt forth from his mind. He could see the thick cord that bound them together, weaving in and out of the skin on the child's face, all the way down his little body. He remembered deep blue eyes looking up at him, filled with pain and tears.

The Doctor winced suddenly, and he worried that he might have projected the image.

"His skin got infected and he got sick very quickly." He held up his bandaged arm and looked it over, trying to remember if the bite was in the exact same place. "I didn't have many options. The infection was spreading through me too, and I knew my body was getting ready to regenerate. I bit myself so that he could drink the blood—give him a little nourishment, and hopefully some of my time energy. In the end, he was too weak to regenerate."

Maybe this was a bad idea. He'd obviously made the other two uncomfortable. The Doctor had told him he didn't want to know, and maybe he should have respected that. Wilf was always willing to listen, but the old man didn't need to hear such things. No one wants to hear about the death of a child.

The silence was too much.

"Sorry," he muttered and quickly slid off his stool. "Excuse me."

He heard a few spluttered sounds come from Wilfred as he left the kitchen, but no words ever came. He closed the door behind him and hurried his steps. There was no point looking back now. He tucked Berran's little body away in his mind, to remember on some other day, and he hoped that the Doctor and Wilfred would do the same.

Now was a time for moving forward, and there was work to be done.

The connection between him and Boris was growing stronger every day and the shadow was becoming like his own. He barely thought of the swarm before he felt the familiar and increasingly welcome tingling on his skin. He felt the sensation travel down his arm, to his bite wound. Boris checked it every day and cleaned it for him, keeping it free of infection while also clearing away any flesh that had healed a little too cleanly.

He hadn't wanted to explain it to the Doctor, but Boris understood why he wanted to keep the scar. The punishment of watching Berran die had been meant to be a lesson for him, and he did not intend to forget it. Especially now.

 _How much longer do you need?_  He heard the chorus of whispers in his head.

He glanced over his shoulder to make sure that no one had come out of the kitchen behind him. "Not long. A week maybe."

_So soon?_

"It could be longer if he decides to keep me out of the lab but, if I don't have many interruptions, a week should be enough."

He saw the shadow slowly forming into the shape of a man beside him, blurring at the edges as he tried to mimic a walk.

_The Doctor will be surprised._

"He worries about you," he said with a sigh as they turned the corner towards the lab. "He won't say it, but I've seen it. He worries that you've become too friendly with me."

_I am still his man._

"And me?"

_I am yours too._

That made him smile. "Then the Doctor _does_ have reason to worry."

_I believe we are all on the same side._

The door to the lab opened up and the Master stepped into the decontamination chamber. "Try telling him that."


	18. The Doctor

Three days passed in relative silence. The Doctor had thought that the Master might become withdrawn again after telling them about the death of his children, but that didn't seem to be the case. He had been working in his lab as much as the Doctor would allow him to, but he was still friendly and glad to have company while he worked.

He took Wilf back to Godforge to explore the temple a bit more, while the Master had requested to stay behind. He wanted to work, and the heat in Godforge put too much strain on him if they were gone for too long.

They looked at the many beautiful creations that decorated the temple, heard the legends of the Haephsian people, and tried some very interesting meals. The priests told them about the pillar of fire in the prayer room, and how they believed it to be a manifestation or a messenger of their god. Not long after, they heard that the fire appeared distressed since the day before and that they worried it might be indicating the presence of something fearful. The Doctor scratched his head and felt embarrassed when he explained that it was likely himself or his ship, as both had a tendency to disrupt the peace.

"How did you ever land a ship on Godforge? Everyone else has to take a shuttle from the planet," the priest asked with wide eyes. "How did you get through the energy fields? How did you find room big enough for a ship?"

"Well, we didn't have to go  _through_  the energy field. We just kind of materialized near the market."

"But there's simply no space for a ship!"

"It's not so much a ship as it is a little blue box. It's smaller than most of the stalls actually."

"A blue box you say?" the priest asked, beginning to smile. "Would you happen to be called the Doctor?"

"Ah, you've heard of me then?"

"We've heard many tales of you, Doctor," the priest continued, shaking his hand enthusiastically. "The man who healed the pain of Torajii and spoke its words. My people believe you have felt the touch of a god, Doctor."

"Well, then let me tell you that the touch of a god is not all it's cracked up to be."

"Are you really the Doctor?"

He turned at the sound of another voice, and found a man looking at him excitedly. He wasn't Haephsian, and he looked almost human except for his black lips and an odd glow to his skin. He seemed to be moving with a large group of tourists of many varied species.

"What, you've heard of me too?" he felt his face split into a large grin.

"Everyone's heard of you where we come from. Oh, my daughter will be so pleased!"

He called over a little girl with long blonde hair and large blue eyes, who could not have been older than six or seven. She made a funny little squeal of excitement when her father told her she was meeting the Doctor, and she grasped his hand tightly.

"You're the Doctor! I like your hair! Can I touch it?"

"Um, well, I suppose so," the Doctor answered with a smile, and got down on his knee so that she could run her hand over his head like she was petting a puppy—enthusiastic and a tad too rough, just as he would expect a child to be.

"Will you take me with you, Doctor?" she asked happily. "Can I see the blue box? Papa, you want to see the blue box, don't you?"

"My blue box is a pretty far walk from here, little one," the Doctor answered kindly. "And I've got my friend Wilfred here who I've promised to take to the fire fountain today. Maybe next time, eh? I'll give you and your dad a full tour."

"Okay then," she answered with a little disappointment in her voice. "But that means you have to give me a kiss! A good one too!"

He had to laugh a little, but obliged. He gave her a kiss on her cheek, right where her little finger was pointing to in expectation. Then with a word of thanks and some merry goodbyes, they continued on their way. Wilf raved about how wonderful it was that the Doctor was so famous many times for the rest of the day.

When they returned to the ship, Wilfred said goodnight and went off to bed. The Doctor went to make himself a cup of tea and made his way to the terraforming lab, glad to be out of the heat.

The strange little blue plant had once again returned to the glass dome and scratched at the door to be let inside. The Master had named her Lily, after investigating her DNA and discovering she had evolved from a species of blue lilies he had been once quite fond of. The Doctor found it very strange to watch her nuzzle her bulbous little head against the Master's arm, or even climb up onto his shoulder and wrap her long tail around his neck.

The two had only found each other because the Master captured and dissected her, and still did on occasion, but she didn't seem to mind. She would sit still for him and let him sedate her, he would cut her open and extract more of the thick yellow goo her body produced, the terraforming engines would piece her back together, and it was as if nothing had happened.

"You're very gentle with her," the Doctor pointed out once. "You treat her more like your pet than a test subject."

Lily had been curled up in the Master's lap, a layer of skin on her back lifted and folded over her head while she slept, like a large petal. The Master kept one hand on her little body, stroking her and twirling her tail around his fingers absent-mindedly while his other hand wrote out pages and pages of notes.

"She made that decision on her own," he answered simply. "Who am I to argue?"

He hadn't expected his opinion of the Master to change very much after hearing about his children, but it had. He couldn't help thinking about when he had become a father himself, and the way it had changed him so dramatically. Being a father had made him far more patient and understanding, and given him a much greater capacity to love. He wondered if the Master had experienced the same changes. Was it fatherhood that had taught him to grow so attached to Wilfred, Boris, and now Lily? Was the tenderness he showed to the little creature the same tenderness he had shown his children?

He wished he had been there to see it.

Later that day, as the Master took one of his regular meals, the Doctor dug through some of the closets in the TARDIS, and found an old round cushion from a chair that he had broken years ago. He threw the cushion in the wash and took it to the lab with him when they returned. The Master happily found a place for it on the countertop against the glass, where Lily usually sat to look outside. The Doctor watched him as he gently set her on it, petting her and talking to her in a hushed voice to assure her that the new object was safe.

It was difficult for him to place the man before him as the same man who had held a knife to his throat just a few days before.

"Thank you, Doctor," the Master said with a smile after he had settled Lily in her new bed. "It will be nice to have a spot to put her when I need her out of the way. Sometimes she's a little too keen for my attention."

The Doctor wandered over to look at the little creature, watching her as she sniffed at the cushion and used her long fingers to feel its surface. He found it funny that she didn't trust a new cushion, but she did trust a man who had cut her open repeatedly. He looked back up and saw the Master looking at him intently, a slight frown on his face.

"What?"

"You need a haircut."

He chuckled. "I'll have you know, I met a girl today who liked my hair."

The Master shook his head stubbornly. "It's much too long. You haven't cut it since I got here."

He took a glance at the windows before him, seeing a faint reflection of himself in it. His hair was getting pretty long. He hadn't been thinking too much about taking care of it with all the chaos around him lately.

"I guess I haven't had it cut since before Christmas," he muttered to himself. ". . . Would you do it?"

The Master raised an eyebrow. "Do what?"

"Cut my hair," the Doctor answered. "Wilf's asleep and I can't very well do it on my own, can I? Cut my hair for me."

The Master looked at him with an odd little smile on his face, as if he were trying to find the trick, but after a moment he simply shrugged. "Alright. It's not my fault if you hate it though; I'm not a barber."

He found himself smiling though he didn't really know why. "Come with me," he said, holding his hand out towards the other Time Lord. "The kitchen is best."

The Master's eyes travelled down to the open hand and looked at it like he wasn't sure what to do so the Doctor wiggled his fingers a bit in invitation. The Master raised an eyebrow and hesitantly slipped his hand into the Doctor's and allowed himself to be pulled towards the door.

"You know, in some ways—not  _all_ , but in some ways," the Master began with a hint of amusement in his voice. "You're just the same as when we were kids."

"I know," the Doctor answered, and glanced at the smile on his old friend's face. "You too."

The walk to the kitchen seemed to go by in a bit of a blur. He had a feeling of heightened excitement, like he did whenever he stepped on to a new planet for the first time. Only this time, instead of seeing a new sky or learning the secrets of some civilization, he was feeling the Master's pulse through his fingers and guiding him through his home without a sense of fear. Who would have thought that a blade against his throat would wash away fear?

He led the Master over to the bar stool on the end and left him there, flitting around the kitchen to find what he needed. The scissors were in the same drawer that Rose always kept them in, despite the fact that she hadn't cut his hair in years now. He grabbed a towel to throw around his shoulders and took his place on the stool.

"Don't do anything too drastic," he instructed, handing the scissors over.

The Master took the scissors and looked at the job before him with a cloud of doubt in his eyes. "Are you sure you don't want to get it done somewhere else? I really haven't cut much hair in my life."

"Too late, we're already here," the Doctor answered, tugging at the towel to make sure he had it on right. "Just take it exactly as it is and just make it a little shorter. It's easy."

"Alright, sit still then."

"And be gentle."

"Oh, it's a good thing you told me because I was planning to snip your ears off," the Master answered sarcastically, snipping the scissors in a threatening manner. "Now shut up and sit still."

The Doctor sat quietly at first, while the Master made his first hesitant cuts. The Doctor felt his hair being lightly pulled and tugged as the Master tried to figure out exactly how long it was meant to be, making tentative snips here and there. The Doctor knew that once he had figured out a method, he would get the job done quickly, but finding the method always took time.

"Sorry if I shared too much the other night," the Master said after a few minutes of concentrated silence. "I know you didn't want to know. I don't know why I kept talking."

"I'm glad you told me," he answered quietly. "It can just be a little hard to hear."

The Master silently continued his work. He was obviously beginning to figure it out and his movements were becoming faster. The Doctor could see little tufts of hair gliding through the air around him and feel the Master's fingers running over his scalp to measure length.

"Were you married?" he asked after a few minutes.

"Of course I was married. Remember the lovely lady who shot me?"

"I meant before her."

"Oh . . . no, I wasn't. To be honest, I didn't have many relationships—too focused on universal domination and that sort of thing. And the ones I did have didn't really last long."

He was working at a decent speed now, hair drifting to the floor in small clouds.

"I just thought, if you had three kids . . ."

"No, no, it didn't really work like that," the Master chuckled. "When I was brought back at the start of the war, they decided to take some of my DNA for an experiment. Given my history, they thought I might take off and leave them to fight without me, so they made Berran in a lab and I was never told who his mother was. They kept me grounded and made me take care of him when he was born, until they knew that we'd imprinted on each other."

"What, they  _forced_  you to love someone? The scoundrels!"

The Master gave him a light smack against the back of his head. "Do you want to know how it happened or not?"

"Yes, yes, go on," he answered with a grin. It was good to know that the Master could laugh about it, instead of looking back on it all with sadness.

"When they saw how well I was able to connect with Berran and that he was making me behave myself, they decided to take the project further. They were trying to tame me, I suppose, and use me to get new little geniuses. So they took my DNA again to make another boy, but he died when he was only a few days old."

"I'm sorry."

"It was my fault anyway," the Master answered casually. "I pissed off the wrong people, as usual, and paid the price." The bar stool suddenly rotated so that they were facing each other and the Master began trimming his hair in the front.

"What about your daughter?"

"Kahlia."

"Kahlia," the Doctor repeated. "Was she made in a lab?"

"No," a cheeky grin spread across the Master's face. "No, she had a mother. A wild woman, and absolutely bonkers, but for a short time she inspired me. Before long I got bored, and she got fed up. Kahlia was really just the offspring of a passion that burned out almost as soon as it began, and I wasn't much of a dad."

He looked up at the focus in those brown eyes, looking for something behind it. He could feel a little wave of sadness roll past him from the other Time Lord, and saw a hint of regret in his eyes.

"I don't remember you being the sort for flings when we were young."

"Well, no, you wouldn't," the Master answered. "I was a sappy little romantic back then, just like you. Taking my time with flirtatious words and carefully planned touches, thinking it was best to just sit back and let something blossom instead of seizing it. I had to change tactics,  _carpe diem_  and all that."

The Doctor scowled at him. "I'm not  _sappy_. That just really is the best way to do it. What would ever make you think 'seizing' something is any better?"

The Master smiled at him a little. "I took too long and someone else swept you off your feet."

He felt his hearts stop for a second. The Master continued cutting his hair as if he had made a simple comment on the weather and pretended he couldn't see the stunned look on the Doctor's face. He found his eyes travelling to the orange clock on the wall and memories of Rose immediately leapt to his mind.

He never told her that he loved her. He held her hand and danced with her in the TARDIS and even kissed her a few times, but he always assumed that there would be more time for the rest. Now Rose was gone, and he had never actually said it. He never thought that a day would come when he simply didn't have any more time, and he had regretted it ever since.

Had he been the Master's Rose?

He brought his hand up and found the Master's, running through his hair again. Time stopped and the Doctor felt like a heavy stone had just been dropped on his chest. The Master met his eyes with a look of confusion and his body seemed to freeze completely.

His hand moved on its own, guiding the Master's through his hair and down the side of his face, stopping on his cheek.

He felt the waves of uncertainty coming from his companion, those brown eyes looking like a deer caught in the headlights. He allowed his energy to travel through his skin into the Master's hand, sharing his thoughts. He didn't know what words to use, so he simply let his feelings seep through—plenty of calm, a little excitement, and a need for action. It would all be okay, no matter what happened.

All he knew was that the last few days had shown him how much he had been missing. He had seen the Master's dedication to his work, the wonder in his eyes as he looked at the flames of Godforge, the pain of a childless father, a kindness so gentle that he could befriend nearly everyone and everything he came across. He remembered seeing tears in his eyes at Christmas when the gun was pointed at him and remembered thinking it was not the look of a man faced with death, but heartbreak.

He hadn't understood it before, how Wilf had come to love the Master so much. He hadn't been able to look past his fear and see the man behind the madness. The cut in his neck made sure that he knew what the Master was capable of and how vulnerable he had made himself all this time. Nothing but the Master's own choices had kept them all safe.

"Doctor," the Master sounded breathless, his eyes still wide and uncertain. "I don't know what you want me to do."

The Doctor smiled and brought his other hand up to touch the Master's cheek. He felt more of his consciousness flood into the Master's mind, and a warm presence spread through his own. There were no real coherent thoughts, but only a thick cloud swimming with so many emotions.

He let his hand slip around behind the Master's neck and pulled him closer, bringing their lips together. A thunderous chorus of four hearts beating together filled the cloud that they both inhabited, and he felt like he was taking his first breath all over again.

The Master's other hand slid up behind his back, still hesitant as it found a place to rest, gently drawing the Doctor's body closer. He opened his mouth a little and found that the Master's narin had a faint earthy taste of copper and strawberries.

Their cloud became thicker, until it was hard to tell whose thoughts were whose. His fingers had tangled into the Master's hair and he felt the hand on his back gaining a little more confidence, pulling his body forward in his seat. Finally, the cloud filling his head engulfed everything, and there was nothing else in the universe except the other mind he was connected to.

He didn't know how much time had passed once they parted. It could have been a mere few seconds, or they may have drifted through all of eternity—his mind was too full of a delirious fog to know. The Master rested his forehead against the Doctor's cheek, taking a minute to breathe together as their minds separated from each other.

The Doctor didn't really know what to say or where to go from there but, mercifully, the Master didn't ask him any questions. He felt a knuckle come up under his chin and gently push upwards. When he complied with the movement he felt a soft kiss delivered to the healing wound on his neck and then the Master pulled away from him.

He was pleased to see a light shade of red across the Master's face. "Your hair looks like hell," he muttered, clearing his throat and seeming unable to make eye contact, but smiling all the same. "I really can't let you walk out of here looking like that."

He nodded his head and only found breath for one word. "Okay."


	19. The Master

The Master woke up knowing something had gone wrong. He felt dreadful and scared and Wilfred was sitting next to him, applying a cold cloth to his forehead.

He could feel the hot, sticky mess of blood all over his arms and chest from some war long ago. Screams and shouts echoed in his head, and his hearts raced with fear. It wasn't real. He tried to focus on Wilfred's worried face and remember that it wasn't real.

It was on some other world, in some other time, that he ran so hard. The knife that tore through his flesh had been long since removed and that body had long since died. But it felt real. He knew he was lying in his bed, trying his hardest to lie still and not thrash about but, in his mind, he was running like he had never run in all his life. He looked over his shoulder and saw another soldier catching up. He was bleeding too much, staggering too much to be able to outrun him.

"Bitch stabbed me in the back," he grunted, looking up and meeting blue eyes.

Wilfred was with him. How was Wilfred there? He tried to push him back, tried to tell him to run, and tried to think of how to deal with the soldier. The gun he had stolen had long since run out of ammo, but it was heavy. His only chance would be to surprise him, and no man would expect him to stop running. He turned back, despite Wilfred's shouts, and charged the soldier. He was fast, knocking the soldier's hand to throw off his aim while the butt of his gun connected with bone. The man screamed in agony as his jaw shattered and he hit him again and again until the screaming stopped.

"Harry, you're safe!"

Wilfred was looking at him with complete bewilderment, and he wished he could have spared him the sight. He told him to run for the shuttle and took the loaded gun off the dead soldier. He wanted to pull the knife out of his back, but he knew he would bleed out too fast if he did it now.

He spotted his Astrosteel carving on the wall and remembered Godforge. If he could only escape and live, the Doctor would take him to Godforge where he would make that piece, in time. He had to get Wilfred out too, so that he could make his hummingbird brooch. Sylvia loved hummingbirds, he said.

"Harry, I'm right here," Wilfred continued, putting his arms around him and hugging him tightly. "It's alright, my boy. I'm here."

The shuttle door hissed as it sealed and he fought against the pain to program the autopilot—it would need to fly on its own while he regenerated. He could hear soldiers trying to force the door open and he only hoped that the stupid bastards would try long enough to get sucked out of the airlock.

"Wilfred, just sit down!" he barked, shoving a chair towards the old man. Why would a space shuttle have chairs with wheels? That didn't make any sense. Shouldn't they all be bolted down?

"Alright, I'm sitting down," Wilfred answered in an oddly calm and quiet voice. "See? Here I am, sitting down. Everything's just fine."

The poor man must have been delirious with fear, completely unable to comprehend the gravity of the situation. He looked up at the carving on the wall again and activated the autopilot. They could do it. They could escape. The shuttle had time jumping abilities, and he could build a chameleon arch with the medical unit on board. If they could just get far enough they could hide until the Doctor found them and took them to Godforge.

Wilf was still watching him carefully with wide eyes, but he stayed in his seat as asked. The knife was digging deeper with every movement and the pain was becoming overwhelming. The airlock began to open, and he watched with satisfaction as half a dozen soldiers were sucked into the cold abyss.

"You keep running forever."

He looked up and saw steel grey eyes looking down at him from the ship's communication monitor. She still had his blood on her face, and she smiled at him in a way that made him feel uneasy. The ship was flying and the countdown for the time jump had begun.

"Run, and never stop running."

"Harry, what are you doing?" Wilf was getting out of his seat again.

He was going to regenerate anyway but who knew how long it would take to lose enough blood?

"Because I will hunt you down."

He looked up into those icy eyes and grinned. She was only threatening him because she knew she couldn't catch him. He was finally getting out.

"I will find you."

"Look away, Grandfather," he muttered, reaching behind him and taking a hold of the knife's handle. He managed to hold in the scream as he pulled it out, and a warm wash of blood ran down his back.

"Harry, stop!"

"I said look away!"

Three seconds to the time jump and the communication link would break. The soldier's gun felt heavy in his hand, but it was his only way of having some form of control over himself in his twenty-sixth body—his first taste of freedom. He looked into that young face with the ancient eyes and decided to give her one last show for her amusement.

"A going away present for you, love," he said with a chuckle and put the gun in his mouth.

He never heard the bang, but he felt himself fall. The shuttle and the pain rushed away into a blur of greys and blues. He was on the floor and Wilfred was holding him. He must have regenerated already because he couldn't feel the hole in his back or see any glow of time energy.

"Did we make it?"

"Yes, yes, we did," Wilfred sniffled and he could see tears running along the wrinkles in his face. "We're going to be just fine now."

"Where should we run?" He felt lightheaded and woozy, but that was probably just his new body settling. "Do you want to go to Earth?"

Wilfred nodded in agreement and forced a smile through the sadness on his face. "That's right. We'll go to Earth and you can come live with me, eh? What would the neighbours think of Harold Saxon moving in next door?"

He frowned. Something wasn't right about this. Had he not regenerated? Had the ship not time jumped? How was Wilfred even there?

"I'm not Harold Saxon." He was trying to remember who Harold Saxon was, but it was too hard to think and the growing darkness was distracting.

"No, no, of course not," Wilfred agreed quickly. "You're Harold Mott."

When he woke up again he was back in his bed. A chair had been pulled up beside the bed where the Doctor sat with an extremely old looking book in his hands. He looked down at his arm and was disappointed to see an I.V. had been inserted, feeding him a strange milky fluid.

"What happened?"

The Doctor jumped at the sound of his voice and the book toppled to the floor. He moved quickly to crouch beside the bed, his doctor's instincts kicking in and immediately checking the drip bag, temperature, and pulse.

"Doctor." He took hold of the Doctor's hand to stop his fussing. "What happened?"

"Wilf heard you shouting through the wall," the Doctor explained, his eyes busy scanning for dilated pupils or beads of sweat. "Nobody got hurt. He said you were doing alright at first, just making a lot of noise mostly and you broke a mug. At some point you picked up a piece of it and tried to put it in your mouth so Wilf shot you with a tranquilizer." The Doctor squeezed his hand reassuringly. "Do you feel alright?"

"I feel sick," he groaned.

"You probably just need to eat," the Doctor answered with a knowing nod. "I didn't want to risk waking you to eat so I fixed you with a nutrient drip to keep you going, but it's not a replacement for real food."

"Can we go do that then?"

The Doctor muttered some form of agreement, but he couldn't quite catch the words. An arm slid beneath his shoulders and helped him sit up, hands holding him steady as he fought the dizziness, and he waited patiently as his I.V. was removed.

"Where's my chair?"

"Your leg isn't broken anymore."

He looked down at his leg and did not see a cast. He straightened it out and bent the knee again just to be sure and everything seemed to work just fine. He slowly pulled himself to his feet, with the Doctor's hands guiding him the whole way, and took his first careful steps. It got easier once he began to move and his blood began to flow again. With the Doctor's help he made it to the kitchen without stumbling and sat on one of the stools before the counter.

He was carefully replaying whatever events he could remember in his head, piecing together what parts were real and what parts were not. He watched the Doctor pulling leftovers out of the fridge in search of something suitable and then glanced around the room, spotting a small tuft of dark hair on the floor.

"Did you kiss me yesterday?"

"No . . ." The Doctor turned and gave him a curious look. "Why, did you dream that I did?"

Well, that was disappointing. "I must have."

He was busy staring at the hair on the floor, trying to find its place in reality, when he felt the light touch of lips against his cheek. "Just kidding," the Doctor said with a quiet chuckle.

He swatted a hand at the Doctor, just slow enough for him to duck out of the way. "That's not funny."

"Oh, it was a little bit."

Eating had been a little difficult when he felt so unwell, but once he got past the first few bites he started to feel better. The Doctor sat next to him and ate jam straight out of the jar and told him about the day a hospital was teleported to the moon. He enjoyed the company, and the story was interesting, but he was finding it difficult to pay attention to the Doctor's words.

His mind was back on the escape shuttle, remembering what it was like to wake up in his new body alone. He was all in one piece, but the gun had left bits of his old self all over the ship and it was not a pleasant thing to see for your first sight. He remembered being so terribly afraid that he could think of nothing else but running. His hands quaked for all the long hours it took to convert the ship's medical unit into a chameleon arch. Part of him had hoped that he could just grow old and die as a human and never remember all the terrors he was leaving behind.

Now he could remember that day with Wilfred holding him and telling him it would be alright. He was happy to let the false memory paint over the true one. He was happy to know that if he had to relive the memories of the war that he would not need to relive them alone.

_ You're Harold Mott. _

"I need to go to the lab," he said, pushing his plate away from him. "I have work to do."

The Doctor looked at him with raised eyebrows. "Now? You're barely back on your feet."

"I'm fine," he muttered, sliding off the bar stool to demonstrate that he could move around just fine on his own. "I just really want to get something finished."

"I really think you should rest."

"Doctor, please."

The Doctor looked him up and down, frowning slightly as his calculating mind ticked away. "I'll stay with you," the Doctor said after a moment of consideration. "And you stop to rest if I say so."

All the while he worked, he knew that he was making the Doctor uncomfortable. He tried to start conversation and the Master would listen but would not be an active participant. He did not want to ignore the Doctor, but he needed to focus. He needed to finish his project. He would not assume that he had more time. If he could pull this off it would be the best gift he could think of to repay the Doctor and Wilfred both, even if it meant driving the Doctor mad in the mean time.

He had been working for five hours straight, aside from his regular breaks for meals, and he'd barely spoken a word to the Doctor the entire time. As he stood at his work table carefully separating the chemicals he needed from the substance extracted from Lily's body, the Doctor seemed to have finally had enough. He felt the Doctor's hands land lightly on his hips and then slide around the front of his body for a loose embrace. The touch was certainly welcome, but he tried his best to stay focused.

"Why don't you take a break?" the Doctor asked, resting his chin on the Master's shoulder and peering over it to watch the machine he was using as it worked.

The Master glanced up at the timer he always kept set, as the Doctor had instructed him to. "I'm not due for a pill for another hour," he said with a frown.

"I meant a break with me."

His hands acted on their own and shut the machine down, dropping his tools on the table. "Um . . . I would really like to, but I wanted to get this finished."

"Come on," the Doctor said with a bit of a whine. "I'm so bored!"

He turned around to come face-to-face with those big brown eyes. The Doctor grinned happily, seeming to consider the change in position a victory.

"Look! Look how handsome I am! And I'm so much more interesting than yellow goo."

It was tempting, he had to admit. The Doctor had finally opened up to the idea of having a deeper relationship and he certainly didn't want to give him reason to change his mind, but he was determined to finish.

"One more hour," he said while mentally kicking himself. "Give me one more hour and I can have this finished. It'll be worth it."

"But it's just goo!" the Doctor groaned, pushing away and moving around the table to look at it from the other side. "Why's it so important? What does it do anyway?" He pulled his sonic screwdriver from his pocket and pointed it at the little dish placed in the chemical extractor.

"Don't sonic it!" the Master barked, smacking the screwdriver away. "I don't want you setting me back at all. If you're that bored, you can scrub out some of the containers over there."

The Doctor glanced at the pile of containers next to the sink and made a face. "Oh no, I'm not washing your dishes for you. You play with your goo then."

It was difficult to get his focus back after that. His mind kept on exploring the possibilities of what he might be doing if he had decided to do as the Doctor asked instead of staying on task. When he finally finished extracting the needed chemical and treating it, he only had minutes to spare on his timer.

He glanced up at the Doctor. He had parked himself in one of the wheeled office chairs, feet up on the counter and rocking it back and forth slightly and eating a cup of noodles as he watched out the window. He had let the last hour pass pretty quietly and the Master wondered if he was being co-operative or if he was sulking.

"Doctor, can you come here for a minute?"

The Doctor brought his legs down and turned the chair towards the work table, raising his eyebrows in curiosity. "What is it?" he asked, bringing his noodles with him and taking another mouth full as he walked over.

The Master continued working, reading over the last of his test results as he spoke. "Do you remember why we began working together? Other than simply because we knew each other, of course."

"Well, you make the rainforest and I make the goods, right?" the Doctor answered simply, leaning forward to have a look at the piles of paperwork on the table. "Why? Are you making medicine?"

"I hope so," he answered. "If you can help me with the final step."

The Doctor nodded his head, pushed one last mouthful of noodles in, and put his cup down. "Alright, so what does the goo do?"

"The main purpose of my research had been to find out how the life here survives the massive doses of time energy they are exposed to," he began, watching the Doctor's eyes carefully, waiting for the lights to turn on. "I quickly learned that they have evolved, not just to tolerate it, but to embrace it. The energy is filtered, turning it from something harmful to something useful. Most of the life here, like Lily, use it as a source of food, or to speed up healing and growth processes."

He could see the wheels in the Doctor's head turning, but he hadn't yet pieced it together. "Alright."

"I then learned how their bodies process it thanks to a certain combination of chemicals, which I then altered," he held up a vial of the thin, golden fluid for the Doctor to see. "It should now be able to filter out time energy in other life forms that might otherwise be damaged or killed, removing it as harmlessly as a body might release heat."

There it was. The Doctor didn't say anything, but his eyes showed that he was beginning to understand. A smile was creeping across his face and the excitement in his eyes was growing into a look of sheer joy.

"What I need you to do, Doctor, is make sure it's suitable," he pushed the vial into the Doctor's hand. "For human consumption."

The Doctor seemed to be holding his breath, staring down at the little vial with unblinking eyes. His hand began to shake a little, and firmly wrapped his fingers around the precious little vial to make sure it didn't slip from his grasp.

He swallowed hard. "If this works . . ."

The Master smiled. "If it works, then I will look forward to meeting Donna."

The Doctor let out a sudden laugh that almost sounded like a sob and a few tears escaped his eyes. He quickly wiped them away and held the vial protectively against his chest, his face split into an uncontrollable grin but his eyes continued to water up. At least this time, for the first time, he brought tears to the Doctor's eyes out of happiness.

Suddenly the Doctor grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him forward, bringing them together. The kiss was gentle but driven, and full of a passion he might not have expected from the Doctor, pushing him against the work table and nearly causing him to lose his balance. A brief taste of the Doctor's charcoal and caramel narin opened their minds just enough to make the joy infectious and he felt tears of happiness rising to his own eyes.

The Doctor broke away, still clutching the vial tightly. "Thank you," he whispered breathlessly. "Thank you so much."

The narin let him feel the Doctor's ambition, so he gave him a slight push to let him know he could leave. The Doctor didn't need a second hint and bounded for the door, grinning like a child on Christmas morning. He stopped at the open door to look back and say, "I learned that from Madame de Pompadour!" and then vanished.

The Master stood in silence for a long moment, letting his mind fully embrace the happiness that had spread to him. If he died now, at that very moment, at least he had managed to create a feeling so pure in another being.

The last of the narin's influence faded away and he felt Lily's bulbous little head nuzzle into his leg. "If Madame de Pompadour taught him  _that_ ," he said with a grin, bending down to give her a pet. "I'd like to see what else she taught him."


	20. Boris

They had been back on Earth for two days when Boris heard the voice. At first it was just a whisper on the wind but, once he began to look for it, it grew louder. The Doctor, Harry, and Wilfred had all left the ship hours ago to explore London so he thought it might have been the ship herself. But, in all the years he'd lived with the Doctor, he had only ever heard the TARDIS sing. She never whispered.

He drifted down the hall, trying to keep the herd close together until he learned the source of the sound. He slipped under the door of the last bedroom, but the whispering did not grow louder or fade away. The dust in the room was as thick as ever, not a single object or stick of furniture had been moved in nearly eighty years, despite the Doctor visiting it regularly.

Ghanje was hovering in the corner of his old bedroom, a simple cloud of blue light these days. If he had been human like most of the Doctor's other companions, instead of an Ennyeseth, he wouldn't even be that. It was simple fortune that he had been able to transfer his consciousness into some of the energy from the blast that killed him.

"Boris, is that you?" The strange echo of his voice bounced off the walls and rang through the air as the light drifted forward to look. "Can you hear it?"

The swarm pulsed in answer and Ghanje seemed to understand. The cloud of light drifted back in forth in the room, and Boris supposed he was pacing like he used to when he had a physical body. The Doctor always got irritated when Ghanje paced, but that never stopped him. Apparently, death hadn't stopped him either.

"I don't know what to do. Maybe it's nothing? It's probably nothing. We shouldn't worry about it. The Doctor will figure it out when he gets back."

Neither he nor Ghanje had the ability to establish a psychic connection, so he could not communicate back. He decided to leave the old ball of energy to his pacing and slipped back under the door. He checked the orb that held the trapped Carrionites but they knew nothing of the voice either.

"It's a spell!" Lilith shrieked in fear. "Those are words of power, I would swear by it. Do not speak any names while it lingers, else we face the curse."

He left the three to console each other in their terror and moved on. The Bio Lab was sealed tight and there was not a hint of sound coming from its door. The Beast of Junicar was still fast asleep in its chamber. Adolii's painting bore the same image as ever and showed no signs of her being conscious. The tissue being tested in the Doctor's lab was sitting dormant and lifeless, just as it was meant to. There was no cry of voices from the compressed star in the library—he thought it was a long shot, but it was worth a look. The Daughter claimed to have seen nothing but told him that the voice seemed louder in the control room.

He travelled through the ship again, watching and listening for anything unusual. It was not until he had actually slipped into the control room that the voice seemed to grow any louder, but now the whispers rang clear.

"Is anyone there?"

He thinned out his body, spreading out low to the floor to feel the vibrations coming from the TARDIS engines. She was holding in all sound, barely breathing it seemed, as if she were trying to hide.

"Will you come talk to me?" the whisper asked.

He was careful in his movements. The entire swarm drifted slowly and with the utmost care, trying to prevent a single particle from bumping into another. If the TARDIS felt the need to not be noticed, then maybe he should follow her example.

"There you are," the voice said with a sudden happy chirp. "Hello, little ones."

He froze. Was it a bluff? Was it a recording? He could see no shadow through the cloudy windows, but the voice was clearly coming from the other side of the door.

"I'm looking for help. Is the Doctor there? Can I talk to him?"

He decided to try and look through the window and see if there was a true living being on the other side. He drifted forward, staying as close to the floor as he could. He saw the Daughter peeking out from one the reflective surfaces on the console, and even she seemed to be holding her breath.

"Please, I need help."

Creeping up the side of the wall, he tried to peer through the window, but it was not clear enough to see a proper image. There was a shadow, right against the door, but he could not make out what it was.

"Will you open the door? Let me wait for him," the voice persisted. "Open the door, please."

He waited in one of the stillest silences he had ever experienced. A long moment passed where nothing happened, and then the door suddenly rattled on its hinges violently. Whatever was on the other side of the door was trying to force its way in. The shadow of a hand shot up and slammed against the window, right where a wisp of his form was trying to peek through.

"Open the door!" the voice bellowed. "I know you're there!"

He looked over at the console and saw some of the TARDIS's lights going off in panic, the engines whirring slightly with desire to take off. The Daughter gave a cry of fear and fled from her mirror.

He watched the doors shaking, threatening to give way, but he knew that they wouldn't. The TARDIS had faced far worse than someone banging at the door, and she had never given way. Weeping Angels had tried to tear her open, the raging heat of stars and volcanoes had tried to rip through her walls, she had fallen for miles and been struck with the fury of solar storms. Not once had he seen a single thing break through those doors uninvited. This thing was just making an awful lot of noise to frighten them.

Suddenly the swarm scattered. There was a flurry of confusion as the particles were swept about as if by a strong wind. Some were swept into the ventilation or simply across the room, while others collided with the walls with such force that their cellular structure cracked, and they fell to the floor, never to move again.

The communication links between the members of the swarm suddenly filled with cries of panic and fear. A portion of the swarm, a mere few thousand out of the billions, had suddenly turned against the rest. Particles of his own body were tearing apart and cannibalizing the rest. They fought back, and within seconds the tiny renegade force had been destroyed and the swarm tried desperately to regroup.

"You should have just  _said_  you couldn't open it," the voice drifted through the air, sounding surprisingly calm now. "Vashta Mereen."

The swarm huddled together, trying to re-establish some form of order through the chaos. They could see a thin layer of black dust on the floor near the door—a new cemetery for their fallen family. What was this monster?

"Don't worry," the voice chirped happily again. "I'll come back later."

He heard the sound of footsteps retreating and with that, the voice spoke no more.

Boris waited in the control room until the Doctor and his companions returned. Wilfred was laughing heartily, Harry was splattered with mud all down one side but was smiling regardless, and the Doctor was carrying an arm full of shopping bags and chuckling.

"I told you I would push you," Wilfred laughed. "You think just because I'm an old man that I won't defend my chips?"

The moment the Doctor kicked the door shut behind them, Boris rushed forward. He formed a dense cloud and pulsated vigorously to get their attention, and the Doctor's brows immediately set into a frown.

"What are you doing in here, Boris?" he asked, immediately scanning the room with his eyes for anything out of place.

A section of the swarm rushed forward to touch the Doctor's skin and establish a connection.

_Leave. Must leave._

"What do you mean 'leave'? Talk to the Master."

Before he even had a chance to turn towards the other Time Lord, he felt billions of little bridges go up, connecting the swarm to the Master’s mind. They told him they had to leave Earth immediately. There was no time to waste. They needed to go  _now_.

"Calm down, Boris," Harry said with a scowl. "Why do we need to go? What's happened?"

It was a good question. He tried to remember what the urgency was about, but not a single particle of the swarm could seem to remember. When he tried to remember why he had entered the control room in the first place it seemed that the memory just came up as white noise.

There was a call for help. That's what it was. The swarm quickly agreed and sent the message along. There was a call for help from Adentious Three and they required the Doctor's help immediately.

The Doctor pulled out the wallet that he kept his psychic paper in and glanced at it. "Why did you get the message instead of me?"

"He doesn't know," Harry answered, mopping some of the mud off his face with his hand. "He just knows we need to leave right now."

The Doctor was frowning and his eyes were full of suspicion, but he nodded anyway. "Right, everyone hold on then."

The shopping bags were placed on the floor and Wilfred and Harry took hold of the hand rails while the Doctor fired up the ship. After a moment of the familiar shaking and wailing, the TARDIS came to a halt and the Doctor straightened out his tie.

"Right, I'll be back in a bit then."

"Wait, you're not going by yourself!" Harry protested. "I'm coming with you. If it's a call for help, it's too dangerous to go alone."

"Absolutely not," the Doctor answered sternly. "If it  _is_  dangerous, then there's no telling how long it'll take or if you'll be able to take your medication or eat when you need to. I can't have you going unstable on me at a critical moment and getting one of us killed."

"He's right, Harry," Wilf agreed.

"Besides, it probably won't be dangerous, in which case I won't need any help."

"But I—"

"I'll be fine. I've done this loads of times before on my own," the Doctor assured him. "Now go take a shower before you get mud all over my TARDIS."

"Do be careful, Doctor," Wilfred said, clapping his shoulder.

"Will do. Do us a favour, Wilf, and take the shopping to the kitchen, eh?"

Wilfred happily complied and picked up the shopping bags, wishing the Doctor good luck before he carried them from the control room. Boris followed Wilf to the door but decided to wait for Harry before leaving. The moment Wilfred had disappeared, Harry grabbed a hold of the Doctor's arm firmly and looked him straight in the eye.

"You come back," he said quietly.

"I will."

The Doctor touched Harry's face, sweeping his thumb across his cheekbone before reaching forward to tug on his ear lobe, not seeming to mind the mud at all. Then with a wink and a grin, he was out the door.


	21. The Master

The Master found it difficult to concentrate on anything while the Doctor was gone. He tried working in his lab but couldn't get the focus he needed. He checked on the Doctor's lab to make sure that the computer was still running its tests on his formula, but that only distracted him for a few minutes. After an hour or two of moving from room to room, Wilfred insisted that he sit and play some crib.

"I don't want you having a fit because you wound yourself up," Wilf said sternly. "Besides, if you're not careful, you'll let your soft side show. "

Hours ticked by and there was not a sign of the Doctor. He tried to sleep, to let the time pass, but he could not seem to find rest. Once he even went to the control room, hoping to have a quick peek outside, but Boris was standing guard and countless voices hissed at him.

_ Don't open the door. _

He tried to argue, but Boris simply repeated the words over and over. He pulsed and swayed in agitation, and his movements became rapid and angry the moment the Master tried to step towards the door. He soon thought better of it and decided to leave the room. He may have considered Boris a friend but, at the end of the day, the swarm could still tear him to pieces.

After fourteen hours had passed, he was finally able to sleep, albeit fitfully. His dreams were plagued with nightmares that he couldn't seem to escape. He dreamt of the clearing in the woods near his father's estate where he once played as a boy, but the trees burned. Kindri's flailing, flaming body ran through the inferno. He saw the TARDIS through the flames and the Doctor was there, trying to reach him.

He tried to tell the Doctor to go back inside, but his voice could not be heard over the loud, incessant beating of drums. The Doctor's clothes were beginning to catch fire, but he didn't seem to notice and simply stood there as the flames slowly licked away his flesh.

The Master tried to run for the TARDIS, but his legs were weak and a heavy weight on his chest pulled him to the ground. Berran was crying—sobbing as his skin was torn from the pull of the stitches and his body was tormented by hunger and infection. His boy was barely old enough to string together proper sentences; Berran was simply too young to die now.

"I will hunt you down," a familiar voice echoed in his head as he watched the Doctor's body turn into a pillar of flame. "I will find you."

He woke up covered in sweat, with his hearts beating so fast it felt like they might burst out. Every instinct he had was screaming at him to run and keep running. He was barely able to control himself and stay where he was.

"Sit and breathe," he muttered to himself, fists gripping the sheets as tight as they could.

"Harry?"

The door had opened a crack and he looked up to see Wilfred's eyes peeking in. A quick glance showed him that the old man had another tranquilizer ready in his hand.

"Are you alright?"

"I'm fine. I'm fine," he answered, though he wasn't sure how convincing he sounded when he was clearly still trying to catch his breath. "Just a bad dream, that's all."

Wilfred opened the door a little more but did not enter. "Are you sure?"

He nodded and wiped the sweat from his forehead. "Is the Doctor back?"

"Not yet. Don't worry about him so much, Harry. He's a clever man." Wilf pushed the door open fully and waved his hand to call the Master over. "Let's go have a cuppa, eh? See if we can get the shakes out of you."

A cup of tea, a meal, and half a dozen stories of Wilfred's youth later and the Doctor still wasn't back. On the nineteenth hour, Wilf regretfully retired for a nap and the Master found himself alone again. Another circuit to check on the labs before he decided the best thing he could do would be to burn off some energy.

The pool room was of a simple design. Cream coloured tiles and walls surrounded the Olympic sized pool, along with a few poolside loungers and a table holding a collection of towels. There was also a hot tub in one corner and a door that led to a steam room, but he had never been bothered with those. It was the cold, clean pool he was looking for.

He had always enjoyed being in water. There was something about its dormant power that he found infinitely calming. Water gave life and took it away, it shaped the faces of worlds and held together the structure of all living things. It was the one element that there was simply no escape from, and a force that would always have its way, no matter how patient it had to be. But most of all, it gave him silence.

It had been his own idea, so very long ago, for the TARDIS to have a pool. He would hold his breath, push himself to the bottom, and let the silence embrace him. Once he had hoped that water, with its patient but all-powerful ability, might be enough to quiet the drumming in his head, even if just for a short moment. Sometimes he was almost able to convince himself that it was working, and the sound he heard was merely his own heartbeat.

Now, when he let himself slip beneath the surface, he really was embraced by true silence. He held his breath and tried not to move, letting the water become perfectly still around him. There was no drumming, no voices, no distractions. Just the silence he had prayed for all these years.

Suddenly there was great crashing sound and the water rushed about in chaos. He opened his eyes, but the water was swirling too much to see anything more than a shadow. Something grabbed a hold of his arm and roughly yanked him upward. He tried to pull away and kicked at whatever had him, but they didn't let go. They broke the surface and the Master gasped for breath, blindly kicking as he tried to blink the water from his eyes.

"What are you doing!? Stop it!"

He recognized the voice and stopped dead. The splashing ceased and with a second for his eyes to blink into clarity he was able to make out the Doctor's face. For a split second he felt his mouth move into a smile, but then it quickly changed to a scowl and he sent a wave splashing into the face of the other man.

"Where the hell were you!?" he barked angrily. "Do you have any idea how long you've been gone?"

"Oi! What are you having a go at me for?" the Doctor cried back indignantly, trying to get his dripping hair out of his eyes. "I come home and go to look for you and you're sitting on the bottom of the pool! I thought you had drowned!"

"I can swim!"

"You  _weren't_  swimming!"

He would have thrown another comment back, but the words didn't come. The sight of the Doctor with his hair sticking to the sides of his head, his blue suit absolutely drenched, and his sonic screwdriver floating away was a little too much to look at and stay angry.

The Doctor caught on to the change in attitude immediately and grinned. "So, did you miss me?"

"Shut up."

"Oh, come on," the Doctor continued merrily, using his hands to slick his hair back. "Say you missed me."

"Get over yourself."

"Only if you do first. Now say you missed me."

"Your screwdriver is getting away."

"Nah, it's just trying to teach you to swim. See how it bobs about on the surface and doesn't sink to the bottom?"

He did his best to glare, but it was impossible. The Doctor just kept grinning at him, knowing perfectly well just how charming he was.

"Come on, Master," he said a little quieter now, though he kept the grin on his face as he closed a little of the space between them. "There's no point in playing hard-to-get now, is there? Here I am, soaked through in my suit, trying to get a little attention from you. After all this time, are you really going to pretend you weren't waiting for me to come back?"

He felt the corner of his mouth pull up into a smile despite himself. It was true, really. He had been nervous that the Doctor might not come back and too many things would be left unsaid. The time to hesitate had long since passed.

He grabbed a hold of the Doctor's tie and brought them together. He could feel the Doctor's mouth smiling against his own as it happily welcomed him. Their feet and knees clumsily bumped into each other as they tried to stay afloat until the Doctor decided to simply give up on it. Long arms wrapped around the Master's rib cage and held him close, and the Doctor's legs entwined in his own. They descended into the silence together and slowly sank towards the bottom.

He felt the peace of being underwater seep from his mind and into the Doctor's, and a feeling of pleasant surprise was returned. In the beautiful silence, their thoughts began to tangle up together in a serene imitation of their bodies. He didn't know if it was his own happiness that he felt or the Doctor's, but it belonged to them both now.

_ I missed you. _

It wasn't until his lungs began to protest that he remembered they were still underwater. Reluctantly, he pushed himself away from the Doctor and reached for the surface. When he swam for the edge of the pool and lifted himself out, he could still hear the Doctor's hearts beating in his head.

"So what took you so long?" he asked, watching as the Doctor retrieved his screwdriver. "What was the big emergency?"

"Not so big, really," the Doctor answered as he made his way to the edge of the pool. "It was actually just a crashed ship that was threatening to blow up its engines right in the back yard of the royal family and give them all lovely, glowing tans. It was an easy fix, shouldn't have taken me long, but they somehow got the impression that I was the one who crashed it in the first place and arrested me."

"You're so good with people."

"Aren't I?"

He retrieved two towels from the table against the wall and tossed one at the Doctor. "So you save them all from an irradiated blast and they arrest you for terrorism?"

"The word they actually used was sabotage," he mumbled, dropping his jacket and tie on the floor.

"But why did they think it was you?"

The Doctor pulled his shoes off and tossed them aside. "I don't know. I was someone who clearly didn't belong in their environment and knew a little bit too much about exactly how everyone was going to blow up, I suppose." He shrugged and peeled off his wet socks. "They were scared. When people are scared they don't think right. Either way, it all got sorted in the end because they let me go."

He waited in silence as the Doctor finished removing his dripping clothes until he was down to his shorts and knew that they were both putting the same pieces together in their heads. Something about this mission just wasn't right.

Boris received the call for help instead of the Doctor and he hadn't been acting quite right since. If it was something as simple as an engine meltdown, the royal family should have just called in their own professionals rather than hope that the Doctor would come. Then they arrested him without grounds, kept him for a day, and released him without explanation.

The Doctor rubbed his hair with the towel and met the Master's eyes. "I think we should leave."

"Agreed," he replied. "What do you think they want?"

"That depends entirely on who 'they' are. One of my artifacts, the TARDIS, the last of the Time Lords—who knows?"

"You're not the last."

He had meant it to sound comforting, but a look of fear swept over the Doctor's face. Those brown eyes pierced through him again, but this time they were heavy with words that the Doctor simply couldn't bring himself to say.

"Who else knows that I'm alive, Doctor?"

"No one," the Doctor answered quickly. "How could anyone know? You haven't left the TARDIS."

"I left on Godforge and on Earth. We've been seen together."

"But that wasn't here," the Doctor answered quickly. "If we were seen, why would they bring me here? And they're all dead anyway. They all went back to the War. No. No, it's just not possible."

"But Boris—"

"I said no!" the Doctor shouted, sounding almost angry now. "Boris heard a cry for help as a side effect of you opening telepathic connections with him repeatedly. The call probably wasn't even meant for me and I simply raised suspicion when I popped out of nowhere and started pushing buttons. They arrested me, they cleared me, and they let me go. If anyone  _was_  hoping to take advantage of my absence, then they failed and it's that simple." He stepped close enough to hook his hand around the back of the Master's neck, making him look the Doctor in the eye. "No one knows."

When people are scared they don't think right, the Doctor said. The Master looked at the fear in those eyes and decided that it was best to let it go. The Doctor was most likely right anyway; if anyone was targeting them, they probably just wanted the ship.

"Okay." He nodded his head slowly. "Let's just leave then."

The Doctor delivered a quick kiss to his forehead and released him. "Get Wilf. We leave in five minutes."


	22. Wilfred

"Why are you both wet?"

The ship had come to a stop and Wilf was retrieving his lost slipper when he noticed it. Harry had rushed into his room and dragged him out of bed, and before he knew it they were all in the control room and flying through time. Now that they had stopped, he had a chance to take a proper look at the two men in the room.

Both of them had water dripping from their hair and wet patches on their clothes that seemed hastily pulled on. The Doctor was wearing the trousers from his brown suit but was only wearing a red T-shirt on his top half. Harry seemed to be a bit more flexible in regard to clothing, but Wilf had never seen him wearing sweat pants.

"What's going on?"

The Doctor let a flurry of words roll of his tongue about falling in the pool while trying to alert Harry. The locals were a little too interested in his ship, he said, and it would have been dangerous for them all to stay where they were landed.

"Where are we then?" Harry asked and, to Wilf's great surprise, reached forward and began punching buttons on the console. He saw a dark look pass over the Doctor's eyes, but no words escaped his lips.

"Maybe you should let the Doctor do that," he said, putting his hand on Harry's shoulder. But the man did not move.

"Doctor," Harry said quietly, with wide eyes staring at the screen before him. "Doctor, have you seen this? Did you know about this?"

Wilf quickly stepped back as the Doctor came flying around the console. They both stared at the screen and the Doctor looked like he had stopped breathing. To Wilfred it just looked like a bunch of circles and a small graph of lines, but then he remembered the little golden glasses the Doctor had given him. He pulled them out of the pocket on the front of his shirt and slipped them on, peeking over Harry's shoulder at the screen.

LIFE SCANNER DETECTED. There were plenty of numbers that followed and some other words that Wilf didn't quite understand, but he was pretty sure he knew what 'life scanner' meant.

"It's probably nothing," the Doctor said, reaching out and shutting off the screen. "They wanted the TARDIS. They probably scanned her to see if she was protected. They saw an overwhelming number of life forms, figured it wasn't worth it, and took off."

"Don't be stupid," Harry turned the monitor back on and pointed at a section of the screen. "What's that then?"

Wilfred squinted at the tiny writing and was barely able to make out what it said. "DNA match for what?"

The Doctor looked back at him and quickly shut the screen off again. "A match for me. They were looking for me. Wanted to know if I was in, if the TARDIS was protected." He suddenly brought his face very close to Harry's and growled in a near threatening voice. "I already told you that." Then he turned away from them and continued pushing buttons. "Just stay out of my way and I'll take care of it."

Harry shouldn't have touched the console. The Doctor had been very clear from the start about what he was and wasn't comfortable with, and Harry was  _not_  supposed to touch the console. Wilfred wanted to grab Harry's arm and pull him aside. He wanted to give the Doctor some space. But Harry stepped forward fearlessly.

"Oi! Let me remind you who you're talking to!"

"Oh, for goodness sake, Harry,  _don't_!"

Harry grabbed the Doctor's shoulder and turned him around. "I am not some silly little human who begged to tag along with you! I am not one of your  _women_  who hang on your every word and stand in awe of you just because you're a Time Lord! I am not your pet, I do not take orders, I will not sit idly by, and I am most certainly not  _stupid_!" The Doctor opened his mouth to argue, but Harry gave him a rough push against the console. "I'm still talking!"

"Harry, there's no need to fight now," Wilfred tried desperately to calm him. "Come on, Harry, please."

"If you're too frightened to face the truth, then that's fine, but don't think you can speak to  _me_  like some badly behaved dog without getting bitten. You may be the Doctor, but  _I_  am the  _Master_!" Harry finally stepped back from the Doctor, but kept their eyes locked, shining with challenge. "I didn't live this long by letting someone else tell me when to worry."

There was a moment of silence so tense that Wilfred was afraid of what might happen next. It was like watching two wolves staring each other down—at any moment they could rip each other to pieces or simply walk away. Then he saw the hardness in the Doctor's eyes falter, and Harry's face immediately softened.

Suddenly Harry turned towards him as if he had just remembered Wilf was still in the room and scratched his head a little awkwardly. "Grandfather, would you give us a moment?"

For a second, he hesitated but, when the Doctor gave him a nod, he made for a quick escape. Against his better judgement, he decided to wait outside the door for a little while and listen. They were shouting at each other, but it didn't sound angry anymore. It almost sounded sad.

He thought of what he saw on the screen, and of the things the two Time Lords had said. He recognized the sudden anger in the Doctor as that of a man who was only angry because he cared. It was the kind of anger he had experienced himself when Sylvia used to stay out too late and didn't call, or when Donna thought it would be funny to hide in one of the kitchen cupboards and listen to them search for her for an hour.

He didn't want to think it was so, but from what he'd seen and heard, he could only deduce one thing. Harry was in trouble. Or at the very least he could be.

After a few moments the shouting stopped and was replaced by the barely audible muffles of regular speech. They were just talking now, and he didn't need to worry about breaking up a fist fight or any other such nonsense. Harry would need a meal soon, he thought, and so he walked down to the kitchen to prepare one.

Within twenty minutes, Harry made his expected appearance. He looked tired when he came through the door, though that may have been his need for medication catching up to him. Wilfred made him sit down and gave him a piece of toast to keep him going until dinner was ready.

"How did it go?" he dared to ask as he poked bits of chicken about in the frying pan.

"We're fine. He's fine," Harry answered with a slight shake of his head. "He's just emotional and, well you've seen how he gets. We came to an agreement in the end."

"You think something's after you?"

Harry smiled at him in that way he did whenever he thought Wilfred had done something clever. "I think it's possible. Certain pieces of evidence point to it, but it could be nothing. I just don't like to take my chances with these things."

"Understandable," Wilf agreed. "And the Doctor?"

"The Doctor would prefer to believe otherwise."

He turned around to look carefully into Harry's eyes. They were such old eyes, and they looked so very, very tired. How could someone who seemed so young have eyes like that?

"What will you do?"

"Take the TARDIS to some empty plot of space in the middle of nowhere and hide for a while. After we take you home, of course."

The sentence came out so calm and nonchalant that at first Wilf was certain he had misheard. But a glance at those eyes told him that Harry knew exactly what he had just said, and he had said it very intentionally.

"Just like that?" he asked, feeling his heart sink.

"Only for a little while. The Doctor has a new job for you, but it shouldn't take very long," Harry popped the last of his toast into his mouth and smiled. "The moment you tell us you're ready, we'll come right back for you."

"Harry . . ." Wilfred took a deep breath and considered his words carefully. "What will happen if someone really is after you?"

Surprisingly, Harry smiled again. "Then I fight."

"I don't want to leave you if you could be in danger," he said quickly. "You boys need me, Harry. Even if it is just to stop you from strangling each other. Don't drop me off at home just to keep me out of the way."

Quite suddenly, the smile was gone. "It's not like that," Harry said rather seriously. "No, it's not like that at all. The Doctor really does have a mission for you and you'll be very glad for it, I promise."

Wilfred raised his eyebrows, not entirely convinced. He liked to think that he had built up a rather impressive circle of trust with both the Doctor and Harry, but there was no doubt in his mind that the both of them were rotten little liars. They were full of silence and half-truths and, sometimes, just plain old dishonesty. It was no wonder that they had problems trusting each other.

"Look, if you feed me, we can go to his lab right away," Harry said, pointing at the pot of rice simmering on the stove. "I just need to eat something before I forget what I'm doing."

By the time he had finished cooking, Harry was a little twitchy and kept looking at something on the wall that didn't seem to be there, but that was the extent of it. He had been noticing that Harry seemed to be learning to control himself better. He still had attacks every few days or so, but for the most part he seemed able to keep it down to a few barely noticeable behaviours.

"I thought of a name," Harry said when he was half way through his meal. "For my boy. The little one."

"Oh, yes?" Wilfred watched him carefully, but there were no more signs of twitching. "And what did you decide?"

"Wilson." Harry swallowed a large mouthful of potatoes and kept his eyes stuck firmly on his plate. "If that's alright with you."

Wilfred felt his old heart swell with pride. He wanted to hug him, but Harry didn't seem as fond of hugs as the Doctor was, so he laid his hand on Harry's head instead and gently ruffled his hair.

"It's a good name for a Mott."

"Wilson it is, then."

Harry smiled through the rest of his meal, which he tucked away with amazing speed. The moment he had cleared his plate, he insisted that Wilfred follow him to the Doctor's lab immediately.

"What's he been doing in there all this time, anyway?" Wilf asked as he was hurried out of the kitchen. "I don't know why you won't just tell me what he wants me to do."

"The Doctor will want to tell you himself," Harry answered, walking a little too fast for Wilfred to comfortably keep up.

He hadn't actually seen the Doctor's lab yet, though he had heard about it. They passed the carved wooden door of Harry's lab and turned a corner down a hallway that he had not been down before. He was a little alarmed when they passed by a heavy metal door with several thick, steel bars across it. When he asked Harry what in the world that room might be for, he simply grinned and shrugged.

"No one knows."

"Wouldn't the Doctor know?"

"That room was there when the Doctor first took the TARDIS. We tried to open it, or at the very least find out what's inside, but the TARDIS never let us," Harry grinned and glanced back at the strange door. "We all have our secrets, Grandfather. Even the ship."

A moment later they came to a pale blue door that rippled with concentric circles, like a cross section of an ancient tree. Wilfred put his hand against it and felt the chalk-like surface before it pushed open on its own. After seeing the door, he kind of expected something magnificent and alien, but the lab looked like the sort of medical lab you might find on Earth—clean, white, and well organized.

The Doctor had dressed himself properly now, wearing his brown suit in full with his glasses settled on his nose. He was sitting at a table with a series of bottles and syringes and a machine that looked a bit like a waffle iron. The Doctor's eyes glanced up at them when they entered, and Wilfred was relieved to see him smile.

"Are you nearly finished?" Harry asked eagerly, stepping forward to look at the Doctor's work.

"Just a few more to go," the Doctor answered. "Did you tell him?"

"I told him you were taking him home for a mission." Harry picked up a little white bottle and looked curiously inside it. "I thought I'd leave the rest for you."

"What is it?" Wilf asked, beginning to feel a bit nervous about not knowing. "Will one of you please tell me already?"

"The Master's done it, Wilfred," the Doctor said, grinning at him with eyes full of joy. "All this time he's been working in his lab . . . he's found a cure for Donna!"

"He what?" Wilfred looked at Harry, who was avoiding looking up again. "What do you mean a cure? You don't mean—?"

But the Doctor nodded vigorously, grinning from ear to ear. "I need you to go home and make sure she takes these pills. After a few days, it should be safe for her to see me."

"You mean she could travel again?" He grabbed hold of a nearby table, steadying himself as he suddenly felt like his knees might just give out. "She could know about all those wonderful things she did? All those people she saved?"

The Doctor nodded again. "If they work, then yes."


	23. The Doctor

It didn't take long to get Wilfred prepared for his return home. He sent the Master to help Wilf collect his things while he finished preparing the medicine for Donna and wrote out a set of instructions. He set up a phone for Wilfred to call them with to report and then, before he knew it, they were ready to go.

The TARDIS landed in the same park that they had picked Wilf up in, a mere half an hour after he'd left. A stroll in the park, that's all he'd done. No one need ever know that he'd been gone for a month, or that he'd flown across the stars and even walked on one.

It was a good day, a happy day. Wilf was bubbling with excitement and the Doctor himself was barely able to contain himself, but he found the Master looking a little less happy. He smiled and said all the right things about being happy for them and looking forward to meeting Donna, but it was plain to see that he didn't like the idea of leaving Wilfred behind.

"He'll be safer at home," the Doctor muttered into the Master's ear as the ship powered down. "And we'll come back for him soon."

The Master nodded his head but said nothing. He had a look in his eye that the Doctor didn't like—the look of a man formulating a plan.

Wilf hurried his way towards them and pulled the Doctor into a tight hug. "Stay safe," the old man said. "Keep yourself out of trouble, lad. And don't be too hard on Harry, eh?"

"I'll do my best."

Wilf gave him a strong pat on the back and then turned to the Master. "Oh, Harry." He pulled the Master into a hug as well. "Take care of yourself, my boy, and take care of the Doctor too."

The Master muttered something in Wilfred's ear, too quiet for the Doctor to hear, and then they separated. Wilf picked up his bags and, with one last goodbye, went through the TARDIS door.

"Hold on to something," the Doctor said as he started the TARDIS up again.

He took them to the darkest part of the universe he knew—so far from all forms of life that even the nearest star was barely visible. He'd come here before, but it was usually in times of great distress. An escape from all life and reality. The last time he had been to this place, he had opened the doors to gaze out into the abyss and for one, very dark moment he thought about simply stepping out.

But not today.

"There we are then. Three birds, one stone," he said happily, looking up at the Master standing on the other side of the console. "Donna gets taken care of, we sit in the middle of nowhere to see if we're being followed, and you and I get some time to ourselves."

The Master smiled and nodded his head, but he looked as if his mind was somewhere else entirely. He must have been worried about Wilf, the Doctor thought, or else worried about the potential of being followed.

"Master?"

"It works out," the Master piped up finally, his eyes seeming to snap back to the present time and making proper contact with the Doctor. "Some quiet will be good."

"I thought you might teach me to swim," he said with a grin. "Seeing as you seem to do it differently."

"I thought you might teach me that trick of Madame de Pompadour's." A hand was held out to him in invitation and the Doctor gladly accepted it.

The fight they'd had earlier had not been pleasant, mainly because the Doctor had a tendency to say hurtful things when he was angry, and the Master had a tendency to get physically aggressive, but it had definitely cleared the air a bit.

He couldn't blame the Master for being paranoid about being hunted, and the detection of a life scanner had frightened him. He didn't like having no control over a situation when he was frightened, and he didn't like the idea of running out of time.

_ One day I really will die, Doctor, and it could be sooner than I'd like. _

That was all he'd needed to say, really.

They would stay here, in the empty void of space, and use the time they had. But when the Master kissed him, and the narin let him into the Master's mind, he didn't find what he had hoped to find. He did find some small sense of relief and some excited anticipation, but more than that he felt worry, stress, and exhaustion.

"You're tired."

"So are you," the Master answered simply and gently pushed him against the console. "Does it matter?"

The Doctor felt arms snake around him, fingers slipping underneath the back of his shirt. He felt the skin of his back tingle to life in excitement, just as it had back in the lab on that day that seemed so long ago now. He closed his eyes just as the Master's lips found their way to his neck, kissing the pink line of new flesh where the knife had once cut through.

His body seemed to lock up again, and he had to lean against the console a little more to hold himself up as the Master worked. Tongue and lips worked in unison as they travelled along his throat, and the fingers on his back carefully slithered their way along the increasingly sensitive skin.

The Master's fingers finally made contact with his shevra, sending a spike of pleasure all the way up his back and causing a little sound escaped him. He heard the Master chuckle quietly in response as his fingers continued to tease the tender skin.

His hands gripped the edge of the console, but his legs seemed to be growing weaker. It wasn't until after a couple minutes of the strange sensation that he realized the Master was doing it to him on purpose—slipping tendrils of thought into the Doctor's mind and coaxing away his control. He could have been angry about it, but the feeling was too wonderful to care.

A finger pressed firmly against his shevra and he heard himself gasp again. The only thing he could think of to keep himself quiet was to grab hold of the Master's head and kiss him. There was something wild and free about the way he felt when he did it—abandoning all his reservations in the heat of the moment and just doing what he wanted to instead of what he thought he should. The Master's hands left their pleasurable work to slip the Doctor's jacket over his shoulders and he immediately responded by ripping his arms free of the sleeves and letting the jacket fall to the floor.

Their bodies seemed to sway together as the Doctor explored the other Time Lord's mouth and welcomed the connections their narin created. Their thoughts were mingling in a haze of ecstasy, but he could feel the Master's consciousness prowling around him like a hungry animal. He felt it paw at him, gently testing boundaries, asking to be let in. Without a moment's hesitation, he let the beast inside.

His mind flooded with a strange fog that seemed to sweep everything else away. There was nothing now but this feeling of two bodies wrapped up together, and every nerve was alive and dancing. He couldn't even think about how to make his legs co-operate anymore, so the Master helped him carefully slide to the floor.

Everything had become such a blur that he wasn't really sure how he had wound up on the control room floor, or when exactly the buttons on his shirt had been opened. He didn't even really know what the Master was doing to him. He could feel the drag of the Master's lips moving down his chest, feel the heat and weight of another body nestled in between his legs, but that didn't explain why every part of his body felt like it was being touched, inside and out.

The Master's hands were firmly planted on the floor on either side of the Doctor, holding him up as his tongue expertly teased flesh and his hips gently rolled against him, but it still felt as if fingers were caressing his shevra. He knew for a fact that the Master was still clothed and that his own trousers had not been touched, but it felt like he was being touched there too. It seemed like it was becoming hard to breathe, his hearts were beating wildly, and he was vaguely aware of some of the sounds escaping him. He'd never experienced any sensation quite as thorough as this. How was it happening?

He opened his eyes for a moment to look at the Master and was surprised to see that his lips were no longer attached to the Doctor's skin, even though he could still feel them. Instead the Master was simply looking down on him and smiling with triumphant satisfaction. The fog that seemed to surround him grew so dense that the only thing in the world he could see was that smug smile.

He wanted to ask what was happening and how the Master was doing it, but he simply couldn't get his mouth to co-operate and all that came out was a series of gasps and strange vocalizations. Suddenly the feeling intensified and his hands desperately grabbed at the Master and pulled him close just for something to keep him anchored and stop him from dissolving into the fog.

He was alive.

He heard the Master gasping too as his body locked up and shook from head to toe, releasing all the built up energy all at once. He could hear the Master's voice speaking quietly and feel the warm breath against his ear, but it was too hard to make out what he was saying as the energy radiated through him and the fog swirled around, slowly beginning to clear.

When he finally came back to himself, he was still panting for air and clutching at the Master fiercely. The other Time Lord's shirt had actually been torn a little from him pulling, and his eyes wore a slightly pained expression.

"What did you do to me?" he found himself gasping.

The Master smiled that smug smile again and answered simply, "Madame de Pompadour's not the only one with a few tricks."

He looked down, seeing the Master's body still pressed against his own, and suddenly felt incredibly conscious of the fact that, with the exception of his jacket, they were both still clothed. "D-did I just—?"

"No," the Master answered with a quiet chuckle and pressed his finger to the Doctor's forehead. "Only in here."

"Oh, you are kidding me.  _That_  is brilliant!" He laughed and felt his rapidly beating hearts finally beginning to slow down. "It felt so real. You have got to teach me how to do  _that_!"

He tried to lean up for another kiss when something caught his eye—a tiny shimmer of gold on the Master's hand.

"What's going on there? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," the Master smiled again, but this time he looked a little embarrassed. "To be honest, I am  _really_  tired. I mean, I didn't really sleep the whole time you were gone and you know it's easy enough to trigger a little time energy output with me anyway—"

"What, did I hit your shevra?"

"No, I wouldn't say that," he answered, shifting positions so that he could sit properly on the floor on his own. "You were trying to reciprocate near the end there and got a little too excited."

The Doctor gasped at the thought but found himself grinning with amusement despite it. "Did I  _crush_  it?"

"Squish. I would say you squished it. Just bloody well squished it half to death."

He couldn't help but laugh as he tried repeatedly to apologize but, luckily, the Master didn't seem to mind. They sat together for a few minutes until all traces of the golden glow were gone and the Doctor named him safe, then he got to work on correcting any changes he had made to the ship's settings when he was pressed against the console.

He was recalibrating the temporal stabilizers when the Master spoke again. "I'm going to bed. I meant it when I said I was tired."

"Right now?" he asked, a little disappointed. "I thought we could talk a bit or, well, you know . . . fair is fair and everything . . ."

"It's nice of you to offer but I really won't be able to stay awake." The Master smiled at him, but the exhaustion was easy to see on his face. "Besides, I had enough fun just watching you squirm."

Then, with an affectionate tug on the Doctor's ear, the Master turned and walked from the control room. The Doctor stood there and watched the door shut behind him, glanced at the floor where they had been just a short time ago, and felt a little shiver run down his spine.

He was absolutely breathless.


	24. The Master

_It will pass. It's not real, and it will pass._

The nightmares had woken the Master up again and bled into reality. The bed was soaked with blood and his head was pounding from his last brawl. The pain was incredible, but he just closed his eyes and told himself that it would pass. An evil part of his mind whispered to him that it was the TARDIS that was the dream—a false reality he had created to withstand the torture, and to pretend that he could redeem himself.

But it wasn't true, he was sure of it. All his life the drums had plagued him, even in his dreams. Where were they now?

Flames sparked to life and began creeping their way up the walls around him, and somewhere in the distance he heard the echoing cries of her other victims. So many Time Lords with so many lives to take. When he finally managed to escape, he hadn't even thought of trying to save any of them.

He felt the ghost of a blade slip through his flesh and nestle into his back, and he gasped despite his determination to not give in. He could see her eyes, looking at him so mercilessly and the smirk that spread across her lips.

He didn't know why he was surprised in the slightest. He really should have expected it. But somehow, even after all this time, he still had a spark of hope. The Doctor would have admired it if he had been there.

He balled the sheets up in his fists, trying to hold onto reality and stop himself from getting up. His mind was telling him to pull himself to his feet, to stagger backwards, to stare down at those eyes of steel and marvel at her ability to keep smiling at him.

"Why?" his phantom self asked. He remembered a swelling in his throat and a stinging in his eyes, but he told himself that it was only the smoke.

She tilted her head slightly to the side as she sat there on the floor and looked up at him, as innocently as if she were some poor helpless girl that had tripped and fallen. "Because it is my choice."

His body stubbornly stayed put, but in that other world he slapped her hard across the face, and when she kept smiling he hit her again with his fist. There was a monster inside him that wanted to unleash his rage on her and just keep hitting her until she could never smile again, but another part of his brain told him to just leave her and run before the knife made him too weak.

He ran, and survived. So did she. The Doctor would have been proud of him for that too.

But the pain was becoming too much, and he was beginning to feel sick. He hoped that the Doctor was not too far away in the TARDIS and let his mind cry out for him. He thought of the day when he cut the Doctor's hair and saw that strange look in his eye, wondering if it was what he thought it was or if he was misreading the signs again. He remembered being pulled in for a kiss and feeling his hearts flutter when their lips connected. He remembered the feeling of being in the Doctor's mind and finding himself welcomed there, embraced by the other Time Lord's consciousness as his body writhed beneath him.

 _Only a dream_ , the evil voice whispered again.  _It's all just a dream._

But it wasn't. It couldn't be. The drumming was gone. As long as the drumming was gone, he knew he could not be dreaming. There had been no drumming when he felt the Doctor's hands grasping at him, or felt his mind reaching out for more. It was so silent that he could hear the Doctor breathing, even before it had grown heavy. He had listened to each untainted gasp and moan so carefully because it was the first time he had experienced such a thing without the drums overpowering them.

He felt the blood running down the backs of his legs now, and the twist of the knife with every step. His only connection to his room on the TARDIS was the feel of the sheets in his hands, as all his other senses were taken back to that time. He felt a man's throat crush beneath the palm of his hand and remembered the sick realization that he might not escape, and it would be because he had chosen to go to her. He should have known what would happen. He  _did_  know what would happen, but he chose to go to her anyway. He could save her, if she would only let him.

The sheet slipped from his hand and he desperately tried to find it again, to find his anchor. Instead he found something much more solid. A hand had found his own and quickly entwined their fingers together. He looked down and saw nothing there but the blood of those he had killed.

"I'm here."

The voice brought an instant wave of relief. He squeezed the invisible hand hard and it squeezed back.

"Can I come in?"

"Yes," he answered quickly. "Yes, come in."

He felt a warm tingling running down his back and a shadow appeared before him, grasping his hand. The shadow slowly took form and solidified, and after a second or two the Doctor stood clearly before him.

For a moment he was blissfully happy, but then he heard the soldiers coming. Why had he called the Doctor here? He hadn't gotten somewhere safe yet and they were still chasing him. It was too dangerous.

He tried to push the Doctor behind him and prepare himself. He remembered how to do this. One of them would round the corner just a second before the other one. He would kick the first one in the knee cap just as he turned the corner, hard enough to snap his leg backwards. As the first soldier fell, he would snatch his gun from him and use the bayonet to stab the second in the throat, then stomp on the first one's chest, breaking his ribs and puncturing his lungs. It would only take seconds, but he had to make sure he timed it perfectly, just like he did the first time.

"Just stay here," the Doctor said, his voice surprisingly calm even though his eyes looked around the scene in horror. "Stay here with me. We'll be alright."

It was hard to fight the urge when every instinct he had was screaming at him to continue.  _Kill the guards, steal the gun, make it to the shuttle, and shoot yourself._  But the Doctor's feet were planted firmly, and his hand was not letting go. His eyes looked afraid, but his mouth smiled.

"It's just you and me."

He couldn't even speak he felt so confused. He heard the soldiers' footsteps growing closer and knew that he had missed his time frame. He could still improvise if he needed to, but the Doctor was pulling at him now, turning him away from where the soldiers would appear.

The Doctor had placed a hand on either side of his face, making the Master look him in the eye. "Just you and me. Right?"

The fear was paralyzing, but he managed to nod his head anyway. "Right."

He felt himself get pulled closer and his face was pushed against the Doctor's chest. Strong arms held him there firmly and the Doctor's voice whispered that it would pass. The sound of the approaching soldiers grew frightfully loud and then suddenly disappeared, as if they had never been there.

Somehow, he was laying down again, just like he was in the bed. The Doctor was laying down with him, holding him as his memories played out into silence. Like a tape running to the end, the dream progressed without him. After several minutes it was just the two of them lying in silence, as the Master bled out on the floor.

"The knife isn't real either," the Doctor whispered. "Look, it's not there."

And just like that, the knife had disappeared.

"We aren't in this place. Not really. Where are we?"

The Master’s mouth felt clumsy when he spoke but, somehow, he got the words out. "The TARDIS."

"That's right," the Doctor answered, giving him another tight squeeze. "We're in the TARDIS, and you're safe."

"I escaped."

"You escaped."

Tendrils of warmth spread through his mind, carefully washing away the blood and tearing down the steel walls of the ship and bringing the TARDIS back. The Doctor absorbed his fear and replaced it with calm, so efficiently that he was not scared when he looked up and saw her standing over them.

"Doctor."

She looked just like she had when he last saw her. Her lip was split where he had hit her, his hand leaving the mark of his own blood on her face. Her eyes were shining with twisted delight as she gazed at the Doctor.

"Your face . . . it's different," the Doctor's voice sounded strained. "You're one of us."

"Not quite. Oh, but it  _is_  good to see you again, Doctor. Look at the two of you together . . . how lovely."

The Doctor held him closer. The Master could hear the other Time Lord’s hearts beating faster and he seemed to be holding his breath. It was the fear, he was sure. The Doctor had taken his fear and was feeling it himself now. She was only a dream, and they were safe. Safe in the TARDIS.

"I'm sorry," the Doctor whispered. "I'm so sorry."

He felt something press against him and suddenly the phantom world collapsed in on itself, and all those frightful things vanished. He was back in his bedroom, lying still in his bed, where there was no blood and no smoke. The Doctor was straddling him, hovering over him, and pressing their lips together almost desperately.

Something didn't seem right. He couldn't think of what it was, but he felt like he needed to do something immediately. He brought up his hands to gently push the Doctor's shoulders back, but he refused to move.

"Don't think about it," the Doctor whispered urgently. "It's just you and me, remember? Just don't think about it anymore; none of that matters. Just think about this—here and now, okay?"

A small part of his brain wanted to tell the Doctor to stop and get off him, that there were more important things to attend to, but he couldn't remember what they were. The Doctor was still in his mind and a taste of narin had made his presence stronger, clouding his thoughts and sweeping away his memories.

"What are you doing?" he asked, feeling an unnatural wave of confusion sweeping over him. "What are you doing to my head?"

"Nothing," the Doctor insisted. "Don't think about it. Just stay with me."

There was still a part of his mind that was telling him to stop the Doctor, but it was quickly losing its voice. It felt nice to lose himself in the Doctor's passion, to let him take away all his worries and just rest. He brought up his arms and wrapped them around the Doctor's body, pulling him closer, and he felt a burst of relief ripple from the Doctor's mind to his.

He felt a little dizzy and light-headed, like his mind wasn't quite sure what it was doing. But it didn't matter. If he held on to the Doctor and thought only of this, then the feeling would pass.

He sat up, wrapping his arms around the Doctor's waist to keep him firmly in his lap. He hadn't yet felt the Doctor's mind be this invasive of his own when they kissed, but he kind of liked it. There was something soft and comforting about it that made him want to bring the Doctor in further.

How had they gotten here?

The Doctor broke away for just a second so that he could grab the Master's T-shirt and pull it over his head, throwing it away from the bed. Then he was being kissed again, more fiercely than before, and the Doctor's fingers snaked around him to find his shevra.

It felt good to be touched and it was all so distracting. The cloud of confusion began to blend in with one of simple happiness and he found himself forgetting why he had wanted to tell the Doctor to stop in the first place. He didn't know when the Doctor had come in, or how they had wound up like this, but he didn't really care. He was too dizzy to care.

The Doctor pulled away again, stopping a moment to catch his breath. The fog was receding, and he felt a little more like himself. Shapes became solid and the ground seemed to stay still, like waking up from a dream.

The Doctor touched his face and met his eyes. "I'm sorry," he said quietly.

He didn't like the look in the Doctor's eyes—like he was so terribly sad. "Sorry for what?"

"Sorry that you weren't feeling well," he answered. "How are you feeling now?"

He took a second to consider it, eying the Doctor carefully. Something strange was going on. But the last of that troubling cloud drifted out of his mind and he decided that the Doctor was always strange.

"I feel . . . tired," he said, realizing now that his body still felt exhausted. "I'm just tired."

"Okay," the Doctor answered and began taking off his jacket. "Alright, we'll go to sleep."

"What do you mean 'we'?"

"I'm staying with you," the Doctor announced, tossing his jacket aside and undoing the buttons on the cuffs of his shirt while still sitting astride the Master. "If you want to get some proper sleep, then you need to stay calm. I will keep you calm."

He considered taking advantage of their current position, or at the very least make a teasing and flirtatious joke, but he couldn't quite bring himself to do it. Something wasn't right. The Doctor had that burdened look on his face that he recognized as the face he made when he lied. It seemed like something was stopping him from fitting the pieces together and he only felt more confused if he thought too much about it.

"Did you do something to me?" he asked, watching the Doctor's eyes carefully. "My head . . . it doesn't feel right."

The Doctor smiled a little sheepishly. "I tried to copy that little trick of yours, but it seems I need more practice," he answered, pushing on the Master's chest to make him lie down again. "Move over."

It made sense, he supposed. He didn't remember how he had gone from sleeping peacefully to having the Doctor on top of him, but that could have been the reason. If the Doctor had attempted a telepathic ability that was beyond his scope, it could result in a little confusion and memory loss.

The Doctor finally lifted himself off of the Master as he tossed his tie and screwdriver onto the night stand. "You'll need to give me more lessons, after you sleep."

"Maybe I should go take my pill first?"

"No. You don't need it."

He shifted a little closer to the wall, laying his arm out for the Doctor to rest his head on. "But what about—?"

"I'm pretty sure it's a placebo effect," the Doctor interrupted, nestling into the given space and tucking his head under the Master's chin. "I think stress is what's triggering the attacks now. You anticipate one coming if your medication is late, so it happens. We'll run some tests tomorrow to see how much, if any, you still need to take. For now, just sleep."

As they laid there in the dark, in the silence, he felt the Doctor's consciousness hovering around his own. It circled around the outside and occasionally slipped a finger through the barrier and tucked something away. It was a strange feeling, but it kept him at peace.

As sleep slowly crept up on him, a frightful thought occurred to him. "Did you see anything, Doctor?" he asked. "When you were in my head?"

The Doctor shifted a little but did not raise his head. "No."


	25. The Doctor

The Master seemed fine when he woke up, despite not having had any medication for nearly six hours. The Doctor had pretended to still be asleep for a little while, lying with his back turned to the Master like a pair of spoons, to see if he changed his behaviour when he didn't think he was being observed. The Master simply laid there with him, resting quietly. He felt a hand gently brush down his arm, then down his back, and finally returning upward to brush its fingers along the back of his neck.

He found it strange that the Master was the kind of person to offer affection when he thought the target was asleep and he wondered briefly if he knew that the Doctor wasn't really sleeping or was trying to wake him up. But then he felt the Master's arm slip under his own and tucked itself comfortably around his waist, and then the Master sighed deeply as though he were planning to go back to sleep.

His memory extraction must have worked better than he had thought. There was no urgency, no stress, not even confusion. He had been very worried about trying such a thing on the Master, certain that he would get caught, but he felt that he didn't really have a choice. The Master was clever enough to know that the image of the girl in his dream most likely had a consciousness of her own—she recognized and spoke to the Doctor in a way that a dream should not have done.

She was bringing the nightmares. The Master had mentioned a telepath that was skilled enough to control a swarm of Vashta Nerada, and the Doctor had a feeling that she fit the bill. Wherever she was, whoever she was, he was certain she was still alive and invading the Master's mind. She wanted him afraid and unsafe, probably so that he would destroy all that he had to protect him in a paranoid rage. She was trying to drive him back into madness.

The Master's fractured mind, still recovering from his botched resurrection, would be an easy target. The attacks he had experienced in the beginning merely provided a platform for her. The Doctor suspected that when the Master became stressed or grew afraid, his mind opened just enough for her to slip inside and implant her nightmares. That was why it was so real to him and so hard to control, even when his mind knew that they were only dreams.

He couldn't let the Master know that. The knowledge of that would terrify him, simply making him an easier target, which he would also know and therefore create a vicious downward spiral until she finally had her way.

He had no choice.

The blurred reality and the expected presence of the Doctor in his mind had made it easier. Had he attempted such a thing on the Master when he was fully aware and awake, he never would have been able to pull it off. But the Master let him inside and didn't fight any of the changes he made because he believed that the Doctor was simply helping him calm down. A kiss and a little enthusiasm to make the Master focus on the physical world instead of the mental, to keep him from being suspicious about the Doctor's invading consciousness, and the leftover confusion of the nightmare had served as enough camouflage.

By the time the Master began to suspect that something else was happening, the process was nearly complete. He removed all memory of the dream and extracted as much fear and stress as possible. The Master would go straight from a dreamless sleep to an intimate moment with the Doctor, and his excuse for the botched memory seemed to go unchallenged.

He had no choice, he reminded himself. The Master became close enough to slipping back into madness when he believed such things to be dreams. If he was going to stay sane and, most importantly,  _safe_ then he couldn't know. The Doctor would pretend that everything was fine and do what he could on his own to keep them safe.

So here he was, in the Master's bed, pretending to be asleep. He had tried all night to keep the Master in a dreamless sleep and it seemed he had succeeded. The man was calm and without fear—the only way to keep him safe now.

How long had she been invading his thoughts? How long had she been gathering intelligence?

Suddenly a painfully loud ringing broke the silence and made him jump. He felt the Master jump too and then heard him chuckle a little nervously.

"It's your phone, Doctor."

He made a show of looking like he had just been disturbed. Blinking in an exaggerated fashion and taking in a long, slow breath the way you do when you're just waking up. He groaned a little as he fished the phone out of his pocket and rubbed his eye with his knuckle as he brought it up to his ear.

"Doctor? Is that you?"

"Yes, it's me," he answered in his best sleepy voice. "What's the news, Wilf?"

He rolled onto his back so that he could see the Master properly and was glad to see him smiling—a strange, soft smile that he'd never seen on the Master's face before. His extraction of memory and stress must have been  _much_  more successful than he thought.

"I've been giving Donna her pills—slipping it in her tea and things like that. She seems a bit suspicious and says I'm acting strange, but she's getting them anyway."

"Good."

The Master had turned onto his stomach, propping himself up with his elbows, and taken a hold of the Doctor's hand. He watched in fascination as the Master turned his hand over and examined it from many angles, bringing up a finger to trace the lines in his palm, and kissing his knuckles gently. This was a tenderness he hadn't expected to see in the Master, but he supposed they had had very little time to explore the romantic sides of each other.

He slipped his hand from the Master's grasp and tugged on his ear instead, then set his palm against the Master's cheek. That seemed to keep him content for a while and he let his face rest in the Doctor's hand as he listened.

"Now the thing is," Wilf continued. "This morning she's been complaining of a bit of a headache, and a bit of dizziness. Is that normal?"

He removed his hand from the Master's face to cover the phone's speaker. "Headache and dizziness—normal?"

The Master simply shrugged. "I don't know. You were the one in charge of making it safe for humans."

He uncovered the speaker and let his hand drift back to the Master, to let him do with it as he pleased. "Yeah, she's fine. Perfectly normal side effects. Just call me again if it gets any worse."

He felt the Master's teeth playfully sink into his palm and he jumped. He scowled at the Master and mouthed ' _What the hell?'_  to which the Master mouthed back ' _Liar'_.

"Oh, good," Wilf said with an audible sigh of relief. "Now the thing was that when she was complaining about it, she said she wanted to see the Doctor! Eh? That's good, isn't it?"

"Wilf, I think she meant she wanted to see an  _actual_  doctor."

"You  _are_  an actual doctor!"

The Master seemed satisfied with his hand now, and simply held it in his own, but now the Doctor saw those brown eyes travelling down his arm to the rest of his body.

"I'm pretty sure she just meant a regular, human doctor. You know, because of the headache and the dizziness?"

"Oh, I suppose so."

"It's only been one night, Wilf. Just give it time."

"Right. Of course," Wilfred sighed. "And how are you, Doctor?"

"Me? I'm fine."

"Are you really?"

"Yeah, I . . ." He looked up at the Master, chewing at his finger nails now as he listened to the conversation. "Everything's fine."

"And Harry?"

He looked at those sleepy, content eyes and thought of how different they were to what he'd seen before. It was hard to look at that face and remember the man who had killed thousands in madness, or the man who had desperately clung to what he believed to be the body of his child, or the man from the dream with arms soaked in blood and frantically looking for an escape. This was a face he hadn't seen in over six hundred years. The Master was happy.

"He's well."

"Good. Alright then, I suppose I better get back. I'll keep you updated."

"Thanks, Wilf."

The Master waited for him to hang up the phone before speaking. "I don't know about you, but I feel much better than yesterday."

"A bit of sleep can do wonders."

"What should we do today?"

He thought of the terrors waiting for them beyond the stars. He thought that he should be preparing for it and finding the answers.

_ One day I really will die, Doctor, and it could be sooner than I'd like. _

The monsters of the universe could wait. All the nightmares out there would find them eventually, but not today. Today he would pretend that all was well and that they had all the time they wanted, if only so that the Master could believe it too.

He didn't know what would be worse: letting the end come before they had a chance to fall in love, or letting the end come after they had already done so. But he had already done the former . . .

He had the Master take him to the pool to let him explain why he had been on the bottom. They went in together and the Master took his hand, establishing a mental connection and letting the Doctor feel what he felt. When they slipped beneath the surface together he felt the calm of the embracing silence, and a wonderful sense of nothingness. In the Master's mind, it was a haven.

They had another go at opening the mystery steel door—something he hadn't attempted in centuries—but the TARDIS still wouldn't give. No amount of physical strength or use of the sonic screwdriver would open it. They tried using some of the many machines the Doctor kept to get a reading through the door, for any sort of hint at what would be inside, but to no avail. They knew it was pointless. They had tried it all before. But it felt like it could be worth another try.

They took a stroll through the jungles of the Master's creation, carrying a bag full of plastic containers for samples. He watched the Master pointing out different characteristics of the life forms, occasionally getting excited when he witnessed something new. The thrill in the Master's eyes at a new discovery made the excitement contagious, and soon the two of them were rushing about in search of life. Once the Doctor touched a plant he didn't know, and it snapped shut on his hand. The Master laughed hysterically and made him fight with the plant for a good three minutes before he finally stepped in to help.

Eventually they went to his library, to show the Master how the collection had grown since he'd last seen it. They rested there for a little while and the Master took book after book off the shelf, pointing out and laughing at any flaws in the writing he could find.

He took the Master to the control room to ask him if he knew how to fix the flux absorbers, as they hadn't worked quite right since the TARDIS had been turned into a paradox machine.

"I don't know what you did to it," he said with a sigh as the readings showed up on screen. "I've tried everything and it's still a bit off."

"You've probably got the temporal stabilizers set too high," the Master answered with barely a second thought. "It needs a little give."

They climbed beneath the platform and forty-five minutes of tinkering later and the Master had it functioning properly again. They carried on with the regular maintenance and the Doctor couldn't help but be amazed as he watched his old friend. He was smiling, but without the manic quality to it that he had grown so accustomed to. He was working without any urgency, irritation, or impatience. He was taking his time and enjoying conversation—simply content.

It was then that he realized what was different. The drive was gone. He remembered looking into the Master's eyes on that seemingly ancient Christmas and pleading with him.

_ We could travel the stars, _  he had said.  _You don't need to own the universe, just see it._

And there he was, finally grasping that idea. Content. He wasn't trying to gain power or dominate anything. He wasn't even trying to go anywhere. He was sitting right where he was, tinkering with the ship because there was nothing else to do, and he was happy.

He had always known that the Master's drive to take whatever he wanted had been born of his madness, but he never thought of why. Hundreds of remarkably clever men and women had theorized for centuries that the Master's madness had misdirected his need to captivate and wondered what it was that he was truly trying to achieve. The Master was happy all the time they were together in their youth, and then he let the Doctor slip through his fingers. For the first time he thought that maybe it wasn't something quite so big as the universe, or even a planet that the Master was trying to own.

"Enjoying the view?" the Master piped up, flicking his eyes up for just a moment as he removed another panel from TARDIS hub. "You know, in most cultures, staring is considered rude."

"Sorry, I . . . I'm just so," he felt the words slipping away from him. " . . . I don't know."

"Amazed, perhaps?" the Master teased, smirking at him as he continued working. "Shocked and awed?"

"Yes," he breathed.

The Master's smirk disappeared, and he stared back at the Doctor in surprise. "It's not actually that hard," he said, suddenly sounding a bit awkward and quickly turning his eyes back to his work. "You could easily do this yourself."

"Not that. You."

He couldn't help but stare, spellbound by the man before him. The man that made Professor Yana. The man that lived before the Master. The man he thought had died so many, many lifetimes ago. The drumming, the madness, the violence, the fear—all those things were just bad memories and nightmares for him now.

The Master's face was turning slightly red now, and he kept distractedly looking away. "I don't know what you're getting at, Doctor."

"You're different," he said, half a laugh escaping with the words as he couldn't believe what he was seeing. "This morning—right now, you're just . . .  _you_."

"You mean . . . that I'm not like the Master."

"Yes."

"Well, of course. Didn't Wilfred tell you?" the Master smiled at him, while still looking a little self-conscious. "I'm Harold Mott."

Six hundred years since they parted. Six hundred years the Master had wandered alone, with the relentless drums driving him to madness. Six hundred years the Master had travelled the stars in search of something he wanted with an urgent desire to take it for himself before it was too late.

And for six hundred years the Doctor had travelled across time and space, always searching for someone to put an end to his loneliness.

"For six hundred years," he said quietly, still unable to move his eyes away. "Did you really love me all that time?"

"Oh, Doctor," the Master laughed, but the laugh sounded almost sad. "Much longer than that."

The Doctor dropped his tools and made his way towards the Master, ducking beneath massive bundles of hanging wires and carefully stepping over chunks of machinery. His cheeks hurt, and he knew it was because he wouldn't stop grinning.

He didn't throw himself forth with passion. He didn't spew out words of affection. He didn't even open a connection between their minds to let the Master know what he was feeling. He did what his instincts told him to do—something he wished they had both learned to do when they were young.

He embraced the Master like a very old friend he had thought long gone. He hugged him tight, not wanting to let go. As he felt the Master's arms hesitantly return the embrace, his hearts were bursting with wave after wave of emotion—relief, happiness, and what he could only describe as love.

After six hundred years, they had both found what they were looking for.

And he wasn't going to let some little girl take that away from him.


	26. Jack

The details had been a bit rushed and confusing as the Doctor didn't seem to want to share much, but Jack didn't often ask him too many questions. Asking the Doctor for answers was like trying to milk a cat and he had long since given up trying. He had decided long ago that it best just to trust him and do what he asked.

"Keep an eye out, Jack," the Doctor had warned. "Keep this to yourself . . . I think something is looking for us. I don't know who it is, or what kind of technology they have, but I do know they are dangerous. You know the sort of thing to look for."

He stopped in the driveway to check his reflection in the window, straightening out his jacket and making sure that it properly concealed the weapons he was carrying. He hadn't yet seen anything to raise suspicion of alien activity or surveillance, but he needed to be ready just in case.

The door was opened by a kindly looking old man who smiled widely upon seeing him. "You must be the Captain!"

"You can call me Jack," he answered, shaking the man's hand. "And you must be Wilfred."

"I am, I am," Wilfred said happily, opening the door wide and stepping aside to let him aside. "I'm Donna's grandfather. Another friend of the Doctor's."

"He has a lot of those, doesn't he?" Jack said with a smile as Wilfred closed the door behind him.

Wilfred smiled kindly back, but his eyes looked eager with question. "If you don't mind my asking, did the Doctor seem alright?"

"I think so," Jack shrugged.

"Did they seem like they'd been fighting? I have been worrying about them."

"Who's 'them'?"

Wilfred looked at him with a confused expression on his face. "Well, the Doctor and Harry."

"Who's Harry? He never mentioned anyone called Harry."

The confusion cleared up and Wilfred smiled at him again. "Ah, well, the Doctor tends to call him the Master."

"The  _Master_? You mean Harry  _Saxon_?"

"Well, yes, but he doesn't call himself Saxon anymore either. He's a Mott now. Just this way, if you please," Wilfred gestured towards a doorway and led him into a sitting room. "Do you know him?"

"I know him," Jack answered with his mouth open in disbelief. "I watched him die. Or at least I thought I did."

Wilf bustled about, moving aside some throw cushions on the sofa to offer Jack a place to sit down. "Ah, yes, the poor boy—shot by his own wife. He's had quite a difficult time moving past that you know, but he seems to be doing much better. He seems to be getting along much better with the Doctor too but, oh, can they fight! But they didn't seem to be fighting to you?"

He couldn't believe what he was hearing. He sat on the sofa and blinked at this little old man tidying up and felt absolutely astonished at the wealth of information that had just come out of him. The Master was not only alive, but apparently travelling with the Doctor and gaining sympathies from the Doctor's other friends.

"Sorry, but I didn't actually see him," he answered after a moment. "The Doctor just called me on the phone and asked me to come here. Sorry, I just need to ask—when exactly did he start travelling with the Master?"

"Harry," Wilfred corrected.

"Right, Harry. How exactly did that happen? I mean, the guy's a lunatic."

The look Wilfred gave him told him that perhaps he should have refrained from that last comment. "Harry is not a lunatic," he said a little stiffly. "He was very ill for a very long time. He went through a lot of terrible things that would drive any man mad, and we're lucky that he's even still here. He saved the Doctor's life and mine, and now we're helping him get better. And you should know that he's lovely."

"I'm sure he is," he said quickly, still not quite believing what he was hearing. "I didn't mean any offense, Wilfred. I guess the only time I spent with him was when he was still ill, and it's not exactly a fond memory."

"Of course," Wilfred smiled kindly. "He's made lots of mistakes, but he's working hard to make up for them now. This cure we've got for Donna was his doing you know. Can I fetch you some tea?"

"Yes, thanks, I would love some."

Jack sat patiently in the sitting room as Wilfred went off to make some tea. He would like to think that something drastic had happened to make the Doctor take the Master on as a companion, but he had seen the desperation on the Doctor's face when Lucy Saxon fired that gun. There was some history there that he could only guess at, and he could tell that the Doctor might be a little more forgiving than he should be with someone he was that attached to.

He suddenly wondered if this medication Wilfred was giving to Donna was such a good idea after all.

After a couple of minutes Wilfred returned with a couple of mugs and a pot of fresh tea. As they waited for Donna to arrive, Jack tried to get as much information as possible about the situation.

Wilfred told him about a lab in the TARDIS that belonged to the Master— _Harry_ , as Wilfred kept insisting—a long time ago and that the Doctor had decided to let him go back to work. He created the cure and the Doctor checked and approved it to make sure that it was safe. Occasionally Wilfred would get distracted as he spoke and go on about some funny little story that happened, like how he was certain that Harry would purposely lose at crib sometimes, or some story about the gravity fields turning strange and the Doctor getting jostled about. The old man's eyes shone with a kind of paternal pride as he spoke about the two Time Lords and the advances they had made together.

"They really don't fight very often anymore," Wilfred added at the end of his story. "But, when they do, it really can be awful. And, even then, I don't know everything that's happening because they talk to each other in their heads sometimes when they're angry, so that I won't think they're fighting, but I can tell by their faces. I can't help but worry about them."

As interesting as this new development for the Doctor was, Jack had to steer the conversation back towards the purpose of his visit. Wilfred began to tell him about the symptoms Donna had shown over the last couple of days. It began with some dizziness and a headache, but both seemed to have passed within a few hours. By the second morning, she seemed to get lost in thought and stare into space for minutes at a time, and occasionally would begin a sentence but then stop herself and say she was just thinking of something silly. On the third day, she called Wilfred at five in the morning, sobbing and saying that she'd lost something but she couldn't remember what it was. It was very important and she couldn't possibly leave it behind, but she just couldn't remember what it was.

Then later that day, just a few hours ago, Wilfred heard an undeniable proof that Donna's memory was coming back.

"What's a TARDIS?"

She had come by the house, the way she often did, to collect any mail that wasn't yet going to her new address and check up on things, when the question simply slipped out. She had looked at Wilfred with a genuinely confused face and shook her head.

"A what, dear?"

"A TARDIS," she repeated. "What's a TARDIS? Is it like a computer or something? One of those fancy coffee makers?"

Wilf said that it took everything he had to stop himself from rushing over and hugging her but, somehow, he kept up the game. "Don't know. Where did you hear it?"

Donna shook her head again, seeming confused. "Something the Doctor said."

"Dr. Gubbins?"

"No, just the Doctor."

Jack had been taking notes as Wilfred spoke, but he paused now. "That's exactly what she said?"

"That's _exactly_ what she said!" Wilf replied excitedly. "And I even asked her 'what do you mean, just the Doctor?', and she said she didn't know, that that's just what he said! And that _is_ what he says, isn't it? Oh, it can be so irritating but I've never been so happy to hear those words in all my life!"

Wilfred went on to chatter about strange quirks of the Doctor's behaviour that Donna shared for a few more minutes before they heard a car pull up in the driveway. Wilf rose from the couch to greet her at the door as a key turned the lock and the door pushed open with a loud creak.

"Macey's bloody cat is in the garden again," Donna's voice was loud enough to demand attention from anyone in the house regardless of where they were, and Jack could just see the edges of her coat moving about at the edge of the doorway. "I've told her not to keep letting it out. If that bloomin' menace leaves another dead animal on my car I've half a mind to take it down to that dodgy restaurant down the road—no questions asked! Maybe bring Macey a lovely curry with some funny tasting chicken and— _Jack_!"

Donna had glanced into the sitting room as Wilfred was helping her take off her jacket and she stopped dead. She stood there, as if completely paralyzed, just staring at him with her mouth open.

"Sorry," she said suddenly, with a bit of an embarrassed laugh. "Didn't know there was any company. And I was just kidding! You know, about the cat thing. I wouldn't—I mean, I wouldn't  _actually_  take it to a restaurant. Only crazy people do that sort of thing, you know, especially the bit about feeding it to her—I just wouldn't!"

"I believe you," Jack said with a polite chuckle, rising from the couch and stepping forward to shake her hand. "Coincidentally, my neighbour's annoying dog that keeps me up all night has mysteriously vanished, and I had a curry that was surprisingly satisfying."

Donna laughed and Wilfred chuckled a little awkwardly, stepping back a bit as if he hoped that Donna would forget he was there.

"I'm Donna, by the way," she said, looking a little too pleased as Jack delivered a kiss to the back of her hand. "Donna Noble—well, Temple, I mean Temple-Noble actually. Because you see I just got married. Newly wed—ring and everything!" She quickly raised her left hand to show off her wedding band and laughing in an awkward and nervous way.

"I see I've come too late then," Jack answered with a smile.

"Ohh, aren't you a charmer!" Donna grinned, fanning herself a bit with her hand in such a way that her ring glittered with the movement. "What was your name again?"

"Captain Jack Harkness," he said with a little bow of his head. "At your service."

"Oh, of course, Jack!" Donna suddenly exclaimed and grabbed a hold of his arm as though she suddenly realized who she was talking to. "Haven't seen you in a long time, eh? When was it? High school reunion or something, right? There was a whole bunch of us together."

"That's right," Jack smiled. "Just last year. Who all was there again?"

"Well, let's see, um, there was you and me," she began, counting them off on her fingers. "There was that one woman there I didn't really know, Martha something. Was Suzanne there? I thought Suzanne Hillsden was there, wasn't she? She'd done her hair all blonde . . ."

"You're thinking of Rose," Jack corrected. "Rose Tyler, remember?"

"Oh, yeah, you're right! It was Rose. You know, I don't remember if we ever gave her that jacket back. She'd left it behind and he was just holding onto it forever! Did she get it back? Must have had a bit too much to drink that night or something—can't really remember."

"Yeah, it was a pretty wild night."

Wilfred had slowly made his way back to the couch and sat down, sipping at tea as the two of them spoke. Donna seemed too distracted by the conversation to take any notice, and Jack could see her eyes shifting in and out of focus. It seemed like her mind would slip to some far away place and then come rushing back over and over again as she spoke.

"I remember John tried to pull some kind of silly prank with this weird, rubber hand thing, remember?"

"Oh, yes."

"How did the trick go? I just remember the hand, and I think he made move or something. Oh! And then he was naked!"

"Naked?" Jack heard Wilfred splutter on his tea behind him.

Donna laughed and shook her head as if she was remembering it all as some hilarious story. "Yeah, that's right! Don't you remember? I don't know  _what_  he was doing but, then again, I'm not even sure what _I_ did. I do remember hugging you though," Suddenly she flashed him her ring again and added quickly. "Course, I wasn't married then. Just got married a week ago. Going on my honeymoon in a couple weeks too."

"Yes, dear, we've all seen your ring and it's  _lovely_ ," Wilfred said with a chuckle. He patted the empty seat on the sofa beside him and Donna walked over to sit down, reaching for the tea pot to pour herself a cup.

"Actually, your grandfather and I were just talking about you when you arrived," Jack said carefully, watching her for any physical signs of trouble. "He said you weren't feeling too well the other day. Are you feeling any better?"

"Oh Gramps, what did you go telling him about that for? Just an off day, that's all. Didn't get enough sleep or something."

"But you feel alright now? Anything strange?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," she took a sip of tea and shrugged her shoulders. "Well, I mean, I keep dreaming about going to space, but I think I've just been spending too much time with Granddad in the yard with that telescope of his. What's it to you anyway? You're not the Doctor."

"So you remember the Doctor then?"

Donna paused for a moment, the smile on her face melting into a strange look of confusion. "And then I forgot."

"You did," Jack nodded, watching her carefully. "But you remember me, and the TARDIS, and space, Martha, Rose . . . do you remember Mickey or Sarah Jane? Do you remember Jackie? They were there too, remember?"

"Everyone was hugging each other," she said, her eyes glazing over in the distant memory.

"That's right. Everyone was in the TARDIS and we were all cheering and hugging each other. Remember the Daleks? Everyone was happy because you had beaten the Daleks."

"But I remember . . . my head hurt so badly, but I didn't want to say anything. I knew it would upset everyone, but I don't remember why."

"Does it hurt now?"

Her eyes came back, and she looked at him clearly again. "No. No, I'm fine."

"Do you remember the Doctor?"

She paused again, and a frown appeared on her face. "Who  _is_ he?"

Wilfred suddenly gave a hearty chuckle and put his arm around her. "We don't know, dear, he's just the Doctor."

"It's so weird. It's like . . . I remember, but it's all kind of fuzzy," she shrugged her shoulders a bit and smiled. "Must have had too much to drink."

Jack agreed and made a joke about having had too much himself, while his eyes scanned her thoroughly. There was no sweat, or paleness, or twitching. Her pupils did not dilate or contract in any way unusual and her speech was not stuttering or repetitive. She could clearly remember more than she would safely be able to if the medication wasn't working.

He asked her several questions to make sure that her brain was still functioning normally after processing that much information about the Doctor. She gladly told him about her wedding and husband in full detail, and then chatted about their amazing luck in winning the lottery and the kinds of things they planned to do with the money, including the honeymoon that they could now afford. All the while Jack was watching for any sign of malfunction but saw none.

"Well, it's been really nice seeing you again Donna," Jack announced after nearly an hour of flawless conversation. "But I really must be going. Thank you so much for your hospitality, Wilfred."

The normal pleasantries and farewells were exchanged. Donna surprised him by giving him a hug, and then Wilfred did the same. He made sure to mutter to Wilfred that he hadn't seen anything of concern, just to calm the worry in those old eyes, and made his way out the door.

As he walked back down the driveway he pulled his little notepad from his pocket to check it. The Doctor told him that he had landed the TARDIS in a nearby park and to come find it when he finished.

"I might need to peek in your head a bit, if that's okay," the Doctor had explained on the phone. "I really just can't be too careful in this situation."

He followed the instructions he had written down to find the park and wandered along the path. He replayed everything he had seen and heard in his head and he felt absolutely certain that he hadn't seen anything troublesome. He felt it would be safe to move on to the next step and bring the Doctor to Donna.

Finally, he saw it, standing in the middle of the park without a care in the world for all the strange looks it got as people passed by—the TARDIS. Jack felt his heart swell a little bit when he looked upon it, realizing how much he had missed the odd blue box and the crazy man that lived inside it. It would be good to see the Doctor again and he was very much looking forward to it.

Then he remembered that the Doctor had a new companion—the infamous 'Harry'. That was a story he was looking forward to as well.


	27. The Master

The Master was well aware of Jack's presence on the ship the moment the doors to the TARDIS opened. He chose not to say anything, wanting to have as many moments to himself as he could. Three days they had had together alone. Three days in which they had nothing at all and everything there was to do. He wasn't sure if he was ready for that to end.

He supposed he could ask the Doctor to take them back in time so that they could have all the days they could ever ask for, but he knew the Doctor was eager to see Donna. He had missed her more than he was willing to admit and, as wonderful as their time had been, he knew that the Doctor didn't want to wait any longer.

"Do you realize how long you've been staring at it?" he asked in amusement.

"I know! Shh!" the Doctor hissed back irritably, his hand hooked around the back of his own neck and pulled at the skin stressfully while his tongue pressed against his teeth. "Why the hell did you do it? Don't tell me! Just don't say a word."

The Master couldn't help but chuckle as the Doctor's eyes carefully scrutinized every single chess piece for the thousandth time. "Have you thought that maybe I made a completely random move just to confuse you?"

"Yes!"

"But no, I wouldn't do that. I've got to have some sort of plan," the Master carried on, leaning back in his seat and glancing up at the ceiling. "And I just want you to  _think_  that it's random. But then of course if I carry on talking, piling on layer after layer of but-I-would-know-you'd-think-that, I only succeed in confusing you further and making it virtually impossible to deduce my actual line of reasoning."

"That's why I said  _shh_!" the Doctor grumbled, leaning forward in his seat now, his eyes mere inches away from the pieces.

"Do you want me to just tell you what I've done?"

" _No_."

"I'd lie anyway." He closed his eyes, the fingers of his mind spreading through the ship and feeling Jack getting closer. "Or maybe I would tell you the truth just to make it interesting?"

"Oh, stop it, I'm trying to think," the Doctor reached out a hand and gingerly touched one of his rooks, paused, and then quickly withdrew the hand without making a move.

"You've been trying to think for ten minutes. At this point I think we could safely call it failing to think."

"Well, what the hell did you  _do_?"

"Are you asking me to tell you now?"

"No, I'm figuring it out! Just be quiet."

Jack was watching them now, hovering in the doorway at the other end of room. The Doctor hadn't noticed anything yet and the Master pretended he didn't either. He was curious to see how long Jack would stand there, just watching.

He could almost hear the little devil on his shoulder whispering in his ear and he couldn't help but smirk as he accepted its ideas. He reached out with his mind, sending phantom hands to slide over the Doctor skin beneath his clothing. He watched the Doctor's face as a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth and broke that look of intense concentration.

"Stop it," he muttered, trying to sound stern despite his smile and wiggling a bit in his chair as if he were trying to fend off the invisible hand.

"Stop what?"

"You know what."

He grinned and flipped some more switches in the Doctor's all too willing mind, convincing the nerves that a hand was slowly making its way down his chest.

"I mean it!" the Doctor said with a laugh, jumping up in his chair a bit as some more sensitive nerves were activated. "Come on, you're not allowed in my head during the game."

"Make your move then."

"Alright!"

He felt the Doctor's mind give him a little push and he quickly withdrew, leaving him in peace. The Doctor took a few more seconds to think before he finally picked up a bishop and moved it across the board, a flicker of triumph on his face.

Without a moment's hesitation, the Master picked up a rook and moved it. He knew the game was over as soon as Jack made himself known, so this one really was completely random just so that he could see the tragic look on the Doctor's face.

Jack stepped fully into the room and casually strode towards them. The Master looked up as if he had only just realized that someone else was in the room, which the Doctor then noticed. His brown eyes followed the Master's and, when they fell upon Jack, he jumped a little in surprise.

"Blimey, what time is it?" he muttered, shifting in his seat and pulling at his clothes a little bit as if he were worried he looked indecent. "Hello, Jack!"

"What time is it?" Jack repeated with a grin. "Aren't you the one with the time machine? I thought you landed here to meet me—you must have known I was coming."

"Well, I did, but I accidentally landed a bit early and figured we'd just wait it out," the Doctor explained, rising from his chair. "Sorry, Jack, I just lost track of the local time."

The Master could hear their worried thoughts buzzing about like hordes of uncontrolled flies. The Doctor was remarkably concerned about how he was dressed—apparently a T-shirt and jeans were too casual for him to feel comfortable in front of Jack. He kept shifting his weight and looking down at his feet, incredibly conscious of the fact that he was only wearing socks and no shoes.

The Master heard Jack thinking about it too, though he merely thought it was different and not odd. Most of the other thoughts he heard escaping Jack's head were primarily to do with the Master, though he was making a point of not looking at him.

"Looking good as always," Jack said as he shook the Doctor's hand.

The Doctor chuckled somewhat awkwardly. "Well, I didn't really feel like getting dressed up today . . ."

"So did your fridge break?" Jack asked. "It's freezing in here!"

"Oh right," the Doctor scratched the back of his neck and looked down at his shoeless feet again. "Sorry, I usually turn the heating up when I know I'll be having humans on board. I still thought we had a couple of hours though . . . Um, Jack, you remember the Master?"

"How could I forget?" Jack answered with a pleasant smile. "I like the frosted look. Dazzling."

"Thanks," He knew that Jack didn't want to shake his hand, so he didn't bother offering it. "It just sort of happened."

The Doctor's eyes kept shooting back and forth between the two of them, measuring the tension. He found it extremely irritating to feel the Doctor's anxiety, not liking how concerned he seemed with what Jack thought.

"Does anybody want a drink?" the Doctor blurted and began herding them towards the door. "I could use a drink. Let's all go get a drink and then Jack can tell us all about how Donna's doing."

"I actually would like to hear the story of what happened to her," Jack replied. "And what happened to the others?"

"I took them back to the other universe," the Doctor answered quickly.

"Damn, I missed out on one hell of an opportunity."

The Master looked at the cheeky grin on Jack's face and immediately picked up the image of two Doctors. He suddenly found himself liking this man a lot less than he did a moment ago. He also didn't like that the Doctor knew exactly what Jack meant and didn't think anything of it.

Soon they were settling down in one of the Doctor's many study rooms, one that was done in an old New York style, complete with a bar. The Doctor directed them into chairs that were spaced well apart and went to pour them all drinks while he rattled off a quick explanation for what had happened to Donna.

"I never did buy you that drink, Doctor," Jack said with a charming smile as the Doctor handed him a glass of scotch. "Maybe you'd be up to it one of these days now that your situation is a bit different."

"Would I be able to trust you handling my drink?" the Doctor answered with a grin—a grin that quickly disappeared when he handed the Master his glass and saw the look on his face.

"And how'd you find your way back to the TARDIS?" Jack asked, sitting forward in his seat to meet the Master's eyes now. "I thought I was the only man who came back from the dead."

"I'm stubborn."

"I know it's quite unexpected to see him here," the Doctor said quickly. "But it's a long story."

"Oh, sure," Jack said pleasantly, and took a sip from his glass. "I just know that it would be a very interesting story to hear. What exactly is going on with you two?"

At least the man was clever, the Master thought with a bit of smug satisfaction. But he knew his Doctor well—a man who was far too protective over his secrets and privacy. Whatever the Doctor thought was appropriate probably wouldn't say enough, and the Master decided that it was best to lay all the cards on the table with a man like Jack.

"Well, it really is a long story," the Doctor said again, his eyes trailing towards the ceiling as he looked for words. "The Master is—"

"Don't you call me your boyfriend," the Master said abruptly. "I'm nine hundred and thirty-six years old and that's far too old to be called someone's boyfriend."

He took a second to savour the truly delightful stunned silence and the slightly horrified look on the Doctor's face. Jack was also looking at him with surprise, but he wore an amused smile with it. The Doctor couldn't possibly have hoped to keep it a secret from Jack anyway, so he may as well just get it out of the way now and claim his territory, as it were.

"That's . . . not what I was going to say," the Doctor said slowly.

"I suppose you could use 'partner'," the Master continued nonchalantly because, whatever bizarre reservations the Doctor had, it should be a perfectly normal conversation. "I don't want to be your 'companion' because that's what you've called all the others, and I'm certainly not one of them. Yes, 'partner' should do."

The Doctor stared at him, eyes wide with a wonderful mix of disbelief and absolute annoyance. "Uh, yes . . . Jack," the Doctor cleared his throat. "The Master is my partner."

Jack leaned back in his seat and looked at the Doctor with an odd little smile on his face. "I guess I should have bought you that drink earlier."

"Afraid so," the Master said in as pleasant a voice as he could muster.

"Can I ask how long you've been together?"

"Not long," the Master chose to answer so that the Doctor could down the rest of his glass and fill it again. "About a week."

"Ah, that's always the best, isn't it?" Jack said with a grin, but his blue eyes met the Master's with the glint of a challenge in them. "Nothing quite like a new relationship. That kind of honeymoon stage where you just can't keep your hands off each other. Great, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes," the Master answered, meeting those eyes and waiting for the rest of what Jack had to say. "Captivating."

"I guess it's lucky that I just walked in on a chess match. I mean, I'm actually surprised that someone in such a fresh romance would be just sitting around playing chess."

The Master saw the Doctor open his mouth, but he managed to speak first. "I know that it might be hard for you to understand, Jack, because you are only human after all. But, you see, our species is so much more evolved that an intellectual relationship is more stimulating than a physical one."

"Alright, that's enough," the Doctor said sternly, but Jack did not break eye contact.

"So, what you're saying is that you don't have a physical relationship?"

"Now just stop it."

"Something as mediocre as blind obedience to primitive instincts is not quite enough to satisfy a Time Lord," the Master answered, ignoring the looks of pure venom that the Doctor was sending his way. "A Time Lord needs someone to connect with on a much deeper and more intimate level. It's difficult to explain as it's something a human is simply not capable of grasping."

The Doctor took another swig of his drink. "I can't believe you're talking about this."

"Oh, I see," Jack leaned forward in his seat as though he were genuinely interested. "I get it. Instead of ravishing someone until they lose themselves in the sheer ecstasy of it all, you think a game of chess is more satisfying. Do you think maybe you're just not doing it right?"

"Jack, I mean it now. Stop it."

"I'm sorry, Doctor, I'm only trying to help," Jack said innocently and then looked back at the Master. "I think if you actually use the word 'mediocre' to rate your own performance, then you probably just need a few lessons. I'll tell you what, when you feel like you're up to the task, give me a call first and I'll show you how it's done."

"Alright!" the Doctor roared suddenly. "That's as far as this goes! We're not talking about this anymore. We shouldn't be talking about this to begin with. We have important matters to discuss and you two are too busy dragging my—may I remind you,  _my_ —personal life through the mud just to piss each other off and I won't have it. The nature of  _my_  private relationships are not open topics of conversation, is that understood?"

"You got it, Doc," Jack answered quickly and with a very serious face.

He was just processing how stupid it sounded for someone to call the Doctor 'Doc' when the Doctor turned his attention back on the Master.

"You, go work in the lab, or go in the pool, or take a nap. I don't care what you do, just do it somewhere else."

He wanted to argue. He wanted to grab Jack by his throat and drag him back out of the TARDIS. He wanted to take full advantage of the fact that Jack could die repeatedly and in any way imaginable. More than anything he wanted to avoid leaving the Doctor alone with the lecherous pervert. But the look on the Doctor's face was one of sincere exasperation and he realized with a sinking feeling that he had just thoroughly embarrassed both the Doctor and himself.

The Doctor was an extremely private man by nature and the Master knew he really shouldn't have pushed him into a situation that exposed so much about himself. Their relationship was young and hadn't really been properly defined, so he had made an awful lot of assumptions in the things he said that really should have been discussed with the Doctor first. Even if those lines had already been drawn and agreed upon, the Doctor was still not the sort of man to flaunt something as personal and fragile as a new romance in front of other people.

He rose from his chair, feeling rather ashamed of himself as he felt the waves of humiliation emanating from the other Time Lord. "Sorry, Doctor," he muttered sincerely and dared to peck a kiss on the Doctor's cheek. "I'll just go down to the kitchen and get started on dinner, yeah?"

The Doctor stood stiffly with his arms crossed and his eyes reflected his annoyance clearly, but he did make an effort to soften his voice when he spoke, "Yes, thank you. I don't think Jack and I will need very long to discuss Donna's symptoms."

"Nice to see you again, Harry," Jack said pleasantly as the Master began to walk towards the door.

"Oh, no, no." He turned quickly and glared at Jack while continuing to walk backwards towards the exit. "No, you call me Master."

"Wilfred calls you Harry."

"I _like_ Wilfred."


	28. The Doctor

"What are you doing here?" The Master's voice came out in a barely audible whisper, his eyes staying firmly shut. "I'm sleeping."

"It's almost morning." The Doctor was crouched next to the Master's bed. He had hoped that the Master would be awake when he crept from his bedroom to the one across the hall.

" _Almost_  being the key word to that sentence," the Master groaned, rubbing his face with his hands and letting his eyes open slightly. "Why aren't you in bed?"

He thought about what the morning might bring, and he grinned. "Too excited to sleep."

"Oh, Doctor," the Master sighed. "You can't get your hopes up too high."

"I know, I know," he answered quickly. "But it looks good, doesn't it? I think she's got a really good chance of recovery."

"I think so too." The Master took a deep breath to stir himself awake a little more before pushing his body closer to the wall and holding his arm up. "Come on then."

The Doctor happily climbed up onto the bed and made himself comfortable. He had been unable to remain angry with the Master or Jack for long after he had put an end to their argument. They both behaved themselves perfectly well afterwards, even if it meant they had to ignore each other for the most part, and the news that Donna seemed to be recovering simply put him in too good of a mood.

The Master hadn't argued, though he certainly didn't seem happy, when the Doctor invited Jack to spend the night on the TARDIS so that he could accompany them in the morning. And Jack, though he still asked a few too many questions for the Doctor's taste, kept his flirting to a minimal level.

They had also spoken privately after dinner and come to an agreement as to what exactly was to be shared. The Master said that he didn't like the idea of being kept a secret, especially around people who were clearly interested in the Doctor, and the Doctor didn't like the idea of announcing their relationship to everyone they met as he had so many enemies out there. They came to the agreement that they would simply keep quiet and be subtle but, if they were asked about it, they wouldn't lie.

As he laid there, eagerly thinking of what the morning would bring, he wondered how many mornings they might have left. Someone was still out there, in the vastness of time, hungry for blood and following their scent. How could someone hate a person that much? He had wondered about her motives before, but there were too many to consider—the Master had hurt so many people.

She could be one of his many, many victims. Perhaps a vigilante of sorts. Her eyes told the stories of centuries, and so he supposed it could also be possible that she was a scorned lover. Though the Master would answer questions or share stories of his captivity, it was incredibly rare for him to even mention his captor. He never said her name, and he would look very uncomfortable and make some vague comment or joke whenever he was asked anything about who took him.

"You're thinking of me, Doctor. How sweet."

The voice had sounded so real that the Doctor actually jumped and looked around the room. There was no one to be seen, and the Master had already fallen back asleep. She was in his head.

"Your mind is not so carefully guarded as your dear companion's. You think of me and it's like you call to me from the other end of the universe. But I am glad for a chance to speak with you."

"Are you here?" he asked aloud.

"Quiet now. You don't want to wake him up," she said in a whisper that feigned genuine concern. "Use your mind, not your mouth. And to answer your question, yes. I am not far from your ship."

_ Let me talk to you, face to face. _

"He will know that you left. He will follow you. He will learn that I am here, and then your little game of house would be over. You don't want that, do you?"

_ No _ .

"Then you will stay exactly where you are and I will stay exactly where I am, and we will talk this way."

_ Listen to me. _

"You will not order me to do anything, Doctor. You may ask."

_ Please. Please will you listen to what I have to say? _

"I will."

_ I don't know who you are. I don't know what the Master has done to you, but I know it must have been terrible. I won't deny that he has done truly despicable and ruthless things. Trust me, I know. _

"I am aware of what he has done."

He had to hope. He knew that the chances of his words having any impact whatsoever were slim to none, but he had to hope. Maybe he could get through to her. He had been a victim of the Master's too, and maybe that would make him a bit more believable.

_ The drumming is gone, and he is getting better. He's changing and he's trying to do some good in this universe. Right now, he is no threat to anyone. I promise you, if there ever comes a day when he threatens another innocent life, I will take responsibility for it. _

"And what good does that do anyone? You are responsible for countless deaths, but that does not change the fact that those people still died."

_ I would stop him. I won't let him go back to what he was. _

"Would you kill him?"

He was amazingly aware of the warmth radiating from the body beside him and of the gentle weight of the arm resting on his waist. The Master's slow, even breathing softly drifted over the skin on the back of his neck and he felt a shiver down his spine.

_ If I had to. _

"And how many more would have to suffer before you finally felt that you had to?"

That question was too hard for him to answer. He knew exactly what it would mean if the Master betrayed him. Many would suffer and many would die and he would still be trying to save the Master. The guilt of the things that had passed was a difficult enough burden to bear without thinking of what he might still allow.

_ I'm begging you. I will do everything in my power to make things better for you, if you'll let me. I can help you, and I will very happily. Please, just please let him go. There is so much more to life than revenge and I can show you. _

"Is this the part where you offer to take me all across time and space to see the wonders of the universe?"

_ If you want to. _

She laughed. A quiet, polite sounding laugh, but the Doctor recognized it as the sound of his pitiful hopes being dashed to pieces.

"You think you have anything new to offer me? When the Daleks finally found us and we received the message that the Cruciform had fallen, all Hell broke loose. In the fear and confusion my men got sloppy and that was when he managed to steal himself a gun. Do you know what he did?"

He remembered the image of a blood-soaked madman he had seen in the Master's dream—the personification of fear and desperation. His lungs felt like they were paralyzed, completely unable to breathe as her words slowly sunk in.

"He slaughtered twenty-seven men that day. He shot a few but most he killed with his bare hands, clawing and biting like a wild animal. My guards became afraid when they saw what he was doing and when they saw that he was headed towards us. They shot me in the leg so that I couldn't run, to offer me up to him in exchange for their lives. When he came through the door he killed them before they could even speak. And he came to me that way, covered in the blood of those he had killed without a moment's hesitation or a thought of mercy, to save me."

He could feel her consciousness prowling around his own. She was looking for a way in, for a peek into his mind. She could project to him and receive the projections he sent back, but it seemed that she had been unable to pick up anything else. He mentally fortified himself, being sure to keep her out.

"It would only be a short matter of time before the Daleks took our ship, and I would certainly die if I stayed. That's what he told me. Then he promised to save me if I went with him, as if a split-second decision would change all that we are."

_ Why didn't you just go with him? Why wouldn't you try? _

"Once, a very long time ago, Doctor, he made a decision. On that day, I made mine. And when he thought I had accepted his offer, when he bent down and put his arms around me to carry me to safety, I put a knife in his back. I made a choice that day to die before I gave him the satisfaction of my mercy; do you really think your promise of adventure will change my mind?"

_ Please. _

"The Master and I have unfinished business."

_ What about me? What have I done to you to deserve this? Could you let him go for my sake? _

"I am sorry, Doctor. It is regrettable that you had to get mixed up in this. You were kind to me. But I'm afraid I can't let either of you go."

_ You mean to take me too? _

"His punishment will not be complete if he knows that you live."

The image of Berran's pained face flashed in his mind—an image the Master had accidentally projected upon him once. No matter how hard he tried, he could never erase that image. He realized with a sickening drop of his heart that this woman, whoever she was, was willing to do that to an innocent little boy just to get her perverted version of justice.

The Master had already told him her motivation for killing his son. She wanted him to know what it was like to love someone and then lose them. The Doctor had just become her newest target.

"You were kind to me, Doctor," her voice echoed again in his head. "You smiled at me so nicely. And you, the Oncoming Storm, the Destroyer of Worlds, the Saviour of the Human Race, and the Guardian of Earth, you, who spoke in the voice of Torajii and survived, got down on your knees to speak to me as an equal."

His hand found its way up to his own hair, remembering the rough scruffing he had gotten on Godforge. He had winced in pain but thought nothing more of it than the clumsiness of a child. He never thought that she might be taking a physical piece of his body to act as a link through time, like a drawstring to pull her along after him.

"Something so humble from a man so great . . . I appreciated that, Doctor."

He had kissed her on the cheek. He had supplied her with his DNA—a piece of clothing for a bloodhound. Once she followed him to the right time, she could scan for his DNA to find the right space. She had been following him since Godforge and he had practically taken her hand and walked her along with him.

"I do not look forward to the things that must come to pass between us, Doctor. For the kindness you showed me, I will grant you time."

_ I don't understand. _

"I will come for you both, but not today. Don't waste the time you've been given, Doctor. See your friends, live your last adventures, and most importantly love the Master. It will make your own passing easier and will make his punishment more effective. Everybody wins."

_ Please don't do this. _

"I will see you soon enough, Doctor. And thank you . . . for your assistance."

He felt a quick withdrawal of heat that left him shivering in the dark. She was gone, leaving him alone to process all that he had heard. It was only now that he was once again aware of the physical world did he realize he had been crying. His pillow was wet where he laid his head and he felt more tears sliding down his face when he blinked.

He was trembling too, and he immediately fought to bring it under control. The last thing he needed now was for the Master to wake up and realize something was wrong. The morning was coming—one of an unknown number left before any happiness they had built together came to a crashing end.

He would fight as hard as he was able, and he knew that the Master would too. They could survive, they could be victorious, but at what cost? Would the Master be able to handle such a battle and come out with his sanity?

His only chance would be to follow the advice given to him by his enemy: to use his time wisely and to love the Master. If there was any way that the Master would be able to face his greatest foe and come out of it alive and still sane, it would be because his love was greater than his fear.

It was their greatest weakness, but the Doctor intended to make it their greatest weapon.

But the dawn was coming and, with it, a new day. Today there was no girl in the shadows waiting to strike. Today he was going to see Donna again and the Master would see Wilfred again, something they both been eagerly waiting for.

Perhaps they could all go somewhere across the stars, even if only for a few hours. They could go somewhere happy and full of laughter, that they might immerse themselves in it and not even have a chance to think that there could be danger anywhere.

The Doctor would smile and laugh and act as though he didn't have a care in the world. He would keep his fears hidden away and let everyone believe in his smile. A monster was coming and, with it, whether they lived or died, the nightmares and heartbreak she had created. But he was determined to bear that knowledge alone and keep smiling, to let the Master think that they could go on this way forever.

After all, that's what he'd done with everyone he had ever loved.


	29. The Master

Despite the Doctor's claims that he was too excited to sleep, when the morning came, he was far from conscious. The Master's arm had fallen asleep from the weight of the Doctor's head lying on it for hours, making it extremely difficult for him to maneuver it out. The Doctor grumbled a bit and moved about but stayed asleep.

Part of him wanted to just stay in bed, but another part wanted to get up and get ready. He wanted time for a long shower, a careful shave, and a dig through the Doctor's wardrobe for something a little more flattering than T-shirts and hoodies. He didn't want to be the unkempt mental patient anymore, and he certainly didn't want to be the scruffy deranged man found in a junk yard eating human flesh.

Jack's grand entrance yesterday had reminded him that outside, in the real world, people still dressed respectably. The Doctor liked to feel well-groomed and, though he would never ever admit it, the Master knew that he liked the way Jack kept himself. Clean-shaven, flawless hair, and dressed in his Sunday best, Jack's image was impressive enough to the Doctor that he had actually felt uncomfortable to be caught without a tie on.

Perhaps it was time for his newest body to finally put on a suit.

As he wandered through the Doctor's wardrobe rubbing his hair with a towel, he was amazed to see how much the collection had grown. He found all manner of outfits in the outrageous multi-colour themes that were so popular on fifty-seventh century Vuunek, pale blue silks from Mehd that were so light and airy when you wore them that it felt as if you were wearing nothing at all, and a coat that appeared to be made from the skin of bat wings.

He chuckled to remember the Doctor's obsession with keeping everything he found or was given, no matter what it was or what state it was in.

"If it is absurd then I will simply wait until it is no longer thought to be so," the Doctor had explained. "And if it is broken then I will fix it, or else learn to love it just as it is. And if it is useless, then I will bring it with me always until it finds its purpose."

Eventually, the Master had gathered himself a small pile of suits that looked about his size. His eyes were immediately drawn to one that was plain black but thought better of it when he realized that was what he usually wore in his last body.

After trying a few on, he eventually decided to go with a light grey suit, taking the vest but leaving the jacket—the Doctor's habit of constantly accommodating humans often made the TARDIS uncomfortably warm for his taste. He found a sky-blue shirt to wear, black tie with diagonal blue stripes that matched it nicely, and a pair of black shoes to complete the look.

It was a little different than what his taste might have called for—a little less sleek and a little more refined, a bit reminiscent of his days as Professor Yana. The important part was that the man in the mirror didn't even bear a ghost's resemblance to the man who died with a gun in his mouth on an escape shuttle.

"What do you think?" he asked aloud, grinning at the flicker of movement in the mirror's corner. "Won't the Doctor think I'm handsome?"

She was there. He could just see her peeking at him if he let his eyes lose focus a little. He'd caught her watching him many times, but she never spoke to him. Maybe she was shy, or unable to speak, or too well trained by the Doctor, he wasn't sure.

He flashed his most charming smile and straightened out his tie. "Oh, you're right, he thinks I'm handsome all the time. Who doesn't?" He winked at the mirror before turning away and heading for the door. "You stay out of my room, little girl. Once he sees me, he might not be able to control himself."

He was half way through cooking breakfast when Jack found his way into the kitchen. The two exchanged a glance and Jack looked like he was going to say something, but quickly changed his mind and simply leaned against the fridge and watched him cook for a while.

"Have you never seen an omelette before?" the Master asked irritably after a full minute had passed under Jack's watchful eyes.

"I've seen omelettes," Jack answered with a shrug. "I haven't seen a genocidal madman putter about a kitchen like a normal person before. I don't even know how a person could do that."

"Then you clearly don't know the Doctor."

The words had slipped out in anger and he immediately wished they hadn't. If the Doctor had heard him say that he would have been very upset, and he didn't have a doubt in his mind that Jack would find a way to tell him. Something about this man just raised the hair on the back of his neck and set him on edge. He didn't like Jack. He didn't want Jack anywhere near himself or the Doctor. At least he could take some solace in the fact that the feeling was mutual.

He cleared his throat and tried to focus on his cooking. "Life is full of shades of grey, Jack. Sometimes good men do bad things and sometimes bad men do good things."

Jack smirked. "And which are you?"

"I'll tell you when I find out. Now either get yourself some breakfast or go away."

A tense silence followed as Jack moved through the kitchen around him. It was like the man just had an aura of disturbance around him and the Master could feel his body reacting aggressively to Jack's presence. His hearts beat a little faster and his ears suddenly seemed much sharper, listening for every movement.

The anxiety and the effort to control it was so distracting that he wasn't aware of the Doctor entering the kitchen until he was right beside him. The feel of a hand landing on his arm surprised him enough to make him jump and, when he looked up and saw the Doctor's eyes, he was filled with a strange sense of confusion. What was he supposed to be doing again?

"Are you okay?" the Doctor asked.

"I-I think I'm bleeding." He brought his hand up to his chest and was certain that he could feel hot blood running between his fingers accompanied with the distinct smell of gunpowder. "I'm not, am I?"

"Not today." The Doctor turned him so that they were facing each other properly. "Here, let me help."

The Doctor's fingers landed lightly on his face and a warm feeling spread through his mind. It didn't take long for the confusion to be swept away as it hadn't had long to build and, soon enough, he found his feet solidly planted in reality again.

"Better?"

He took a deep breath and looked down at himself—not a drop of blood in sight. "Yes, thank you."

To his surprise the Doctor kissed him on the forehead before pointing a stern finger at Jack. "You. Stop stressing him out."

"I'm not!"

"You are and you know it. Stress can trigger one of his attacks and, trust me, you don't want to be around for one of those."

He kept his eyes focused on his tasks on the stove, but he could see Jack in the back of his mind, leaning against the kitchen counter and smirking. "If he's so dangerous why are you letting him just walk around and do what he likes?"

"Because he's a sick man, Jack, not a rabid animal!" The Doctor raised his voice angrily, and the Master felt a hand land protectively on his shoulder. "I was hoping that despite the unpleasant experiences between you and the Master that you might still be able to behave like a civilized adult, but if you don't like the way I run things on my own ship then you are free to return to Torchwood."

"Okay, okay! Your house, your rules, understood. I'm sorry."

Jack was completely unsympathetic towards him—he could feel the emotions of disgust and aggression just by being in the same room as him. But whatever he had against Jack, at least they shared a common love for the Doctor. The only thing keeping Jack from pulling a gun on him right now was that the Doctor wouldn't want it. He supposed he should be glad to know that a true immortal would fight for the Doctor until the end of time, but he couldn't help wanting Jack to simply fade away and disappear.

It was jealousy, really. He didn't like the way Jack looked at the Doctor, or spoke to him, or thought about him. He didn't like that Jack's immortality made him immediately well-suited as a mate in the Doctor's eyes—someone he could love without needing to fear their death. If Jack's affections were claimed by someone else, he might be able to handle the man's presence without feeling defensive.

But it seemed that the Doctor understood all that. He was going against his shy and private nature to demonstrate to Jack that they were together. He stood so close that the sides of their bodies were resting against each other. If the Doctor turned towards the stove to look at what he was cooking, a hand would snake around his waist and rest on his hip, or land on his back. Once the Doctor even brushed his shevra with enough force that it must have been intentional. He was sure that Jack didn't know anything about shevras, but he was surprised that the Doctor would do that in front of another person regardless. Then, when he finished his cooking and handed the Doctor his plate, the Doctor kissed him right on the mouth. It wasn't anything fancy, just a simple peck, but for the Doctor it was a very clear and definitive message.

"You look good today," the Doctor muttered in his ear as they moved towards the bar stools to sit down. "Not that there's anything wrong with jeans but . . . well, you look good in a suit."

Jack had clearly overheard the last comment and his eyes travelled over for another look. "It reminds me a bit of how he dressed when I first met him. Don't you think?"

"I do," the Doctor agreed, settling on his seat right next to the Master. "And wasn't it an eye-opener to see what a good man he is when he's not ill?"

Jack said nothing, and the Master was able to enjoy his breakfast with a wonderful feeling of satisfaction.

Soon enough, breakfast was over and it was time to go. The Doctor was grinning from ear to ear, clearly back in good spirits and unable to sit still now that seeing Donna was so close. He told Jack that they would all meet outside in five minutes before he grabbed the Master's hand and led him from the kitchen.

As the door closed behind them, the Master opened his mouth to ask why he was being dragged but the Doctor changed direction so abruptly that he didn't get the words out. He was pulled to the side, through the first door they came to after the kitchen and the Doctor slammed it shut behind them.

He wasn't even sure what room it was, but he didn't have a chance to look. The Doctor pushed him against the wall and locked them together. It was the kind of passion he didn't often see in the Doctor, who was generally quite subtle and gentle when it came to romance, but there were fingers running through his hair and a body being pushed eagerly against him. The narin filled him with the Doctor's excitement and a strong feeling for immediate action.

They stumbled together, wrapped up in a storm of narin-induced mania, and the Master heard several things in the room being knocked over. One of the Doctor's hands slid down from his hair, travelling down his chest with fingers that grasped and pulled. He felt the lips moving against his pull themselves into a smile as that hand continued to travel down the front of his trousers, until it found something to take a hold of.

"Doctor!" he gasped, quite surprised because the Doctor had not touched him like that before. "What are you doing? You only said five minutes."

"I know," the Doctor answered, letting his other hand find its way down to the Master's shevra in search of another gasp. "I just want you to be thinking about this all day. Any time Jack starts to get on your nerves, I want you to think about this and remember that he will never know what I can do to a man."

His eyes closed and his hearts beating faster as the Doctor's hands and mouth grew more and more adventurous. The moment that the Doctor finally pulled away was almost painful. The Master's skin was alive, crying for more, and the Doctor knew it. He looked at the Master with his eyes alight and a proud smirk on his face.

"Today will be a good day . . . and tonight will be even better," The Doctor gave him a little tug on his earlobe and winked. "Think about it."

And suddenly the Doctor was gone.

He took a minute or two to straighten himself out—readjusting his clothes, fixing his hair, and letting himself calm down a bit. A glance in the mirror told him that he once again looked like the perfectly likeable and respectable Harold Mott.

Jack and the Doctor were already outside when he stepped into the warm summer air. England's weather was meant to be mild, but he still found it uncomfortably warm and had no idea how the Doctor made his way about on Earth wearing a full suit and a coat.

"Come along then, Master," the Doctor said, holding out his hand. "Allons-y."

They walked together hand-in-hand, with Jack walking a few steps ahead of them. He wasn't particularly fond of the thought that the Doctor was learning to manipulate him, but he was well aware that it had worked. He still didn't like Jack, but he suddenly found that he didn't feel quite so defensive or aggressive in his presence. Jack may think that he knew the Doctor, but the Master knew the mad little boy who lived up the mountain that never wore shoes and had a head full of impossible dreams. He knew the shy teenager at the academy who always seemed to be alone, got excited over strange things, and never really fit in with his own species. He knew the young man who was so enchanted by an ancient, beat up machine in a museum that he stole it and escaped to the stars.  _Borrowed_ , the Doctor had always insisted, but they both knew that he had never intended to go back to a normal life.

Who did Jack know? Jack knew a fragment. He had seen a glimpse of the shadow of the man that the Doctor was. Jack was the sort of person who would say that the Doctor's readiness to sacrifice himself for another stemmed from nobility alone, that the Doctor's need to travel was a simple love of adventure, or that the Doctor chose not to carry weapons because he didn't like violence. Jack knew nothing.

"That's her car," Jack said, pointing at the drive way they were approaching. "She's already here."

"I want you two to go to the door first," the Doctor said, his eyes carefully scanning the windows of the house. "She has fewer memories of you two. She might not even remember you at all, Master, since she only saw last Christmas and . . . well, you saw what happened."

"He's right," Jack agreed quickly. "It's better to ease her into it. Doctor, why don't you just wait on the driveway and we'll bring her outside in a few minutes?"

"Yes, yes, good idea, Jack," the Doctor was trying to sound calm, but the Master could hear the nervousness in his voice. "I'll wait here."

He pecked a kiss on the Doctor's cheek and whispered, "It's going to be fine." The Doctor smiled nervously in return and nodded his head before releasing the Master's hand.

When the door opened, the famous Donna Noble looked at Jack and gave him a lovely smile, obviously pleased to see him. But, when her eyes travelled to the Master, she gave a shrill scream, slapped him across the face, and slammed the door shut.

"Looks like she remembers you!" Jack laughed.

What the hell was that about? He was still blinking in shock with a hand against his now throbbing cheek when the door suddenly opened again.

"Did I just slap the bleeding Prime Minister?" Donna shrieked.

"You did," Jack answered, still laughing. "But it's okay, he had it coming."

"I am so sorry! I don't know why I did that," Donna began, speaking so fast that her words seemed to blend together. "I don't know what came over me! I just—I mean, I'm really happy to see you but you scared me a bit. I'm sorry, I'm just having a really weird morning, kind of emotional. But, oh, I am happy to see you!"

Suddenly she threw her arms around his neck and nearly knocked him over. The Master stood frozen in shock, completely unsure of what to do, and a little worried that her mood would suddenly shift again and he'd get another slap.

"You don't really know him, Donna . . ." Jack said slowly, raising an eyebrow.

"Oh, I know!" She suddenly let go and stepped back as if she had just realized how strange it was and hurriedly wiped some tears from her eyes. "Oh, I'm such a mess! GRAMPS, GET SOME ICE! It's just—well, it feels like I do. Like I know you, I mean. Either way, I'm sorry about—"

She stopped very abruptly and her eyes fixed on something behind them. The Master peered back over his shoulder and immediately spotted the culprit. The Doctor stayed around the corner of the shrubbery where he could stay unseen, but the shrub was trimmed at the bottom, leaving a gap several inches high and making the Doctor's bright red shoes perfectly visible.

"But what's he—well, no it can't be. I mean it's not . . . John?" Donna's eyes suddenly began to tear up again and she pushed past the Master and Jack to run to the driveway. "John!? It's really you!"

They quickly ran after her, expecting to see the Doctor either backing up or taking off full speed down the street. But, when they turned the corner, the Doctor was hugging her so tight that he'd lifted her right off the ground. Donna was sobbing over his shoulder while repeatedly crying out that she was happy and didn't know why she was crying.

"You do whatever you feel like!" the Doctor laughed breathlessly and hugged her tighter, kissing her on the side of her head. "You can hit me too if you like, I don't care."

"But your name's not John! You said your name was John!"

"I know, I know," the Doctor answered, loosening his grip just enough to let her back on the ground. "I lied when I said that. Sorry."

Donna pulled back enough to look up at his face. "But who are you?"

He grinned wide and wiped a tear from his eye. "I'm the Doctor."


	30. Wilfred

Part of Wilfred wished that he had never noticed anything was strange at all. Part of him wished that he had simply ignored the flicker of the lights and the quiet thump that came from upstairs. He wished he had ignored it as just a strange sound and followed Donna to answer the door, but he had seen too many strange things to ignore a sound that shouldn't be there.

He asked Donna to answer the door, saying that he would be right back, and quickly made his way up the steps. Every door in the upstairs hallway was closed but when he listened carefully he could hear it—somebody was gasping for air, and someone else was whispering in a frantic manner. They were in Donna's old bedroom, empty now except for her bed.

He paused with his hand hovering over the door knob and listened carefully but couldn't make out any words from the frightened voice. Maybe he should get the Doctor first? There was no reason to believe that it was safe, and he had no way of handling whatever madness he might find on the other side of that door, but his instincts told him to go in alone.

He pushed at the door, his body tense and preparing to run, but he did not expect what he saw inside.

"Wilfred . . ." The Doctor was sitting on the floor, looking up at him with wide eyes.

But it wasn't the Doctor—his hair was a few inches too long and his face had several days' worth of hair growth. There was a large cut in his forehead and the blood streamed down his face and into his eyes. He knew who was with the Doctor before he even looked down, but he still felt his heart stop when he saw that face.

Harry was lying in the Doctor's arms, gasping for air and his eyes looking wild and delirious. There was so much blood. There was a strange mass the size of a basket ball attached to Harry's chest, almost like it was a part of him. The ball had been covered with a cloth but Wilfred could still see a small part and it looked as if it were flesh. The blood was coming from where it was connected to Harry, looking like it had been torn open and was now pumping it out freely, despite the Doctor's hand holding a ball of cloth against it.

"GRAMPS, GET SOME ICE!"

The Doctor's panicked face broke into a hint of a smile and he looked down at Harry. "You hear that? She just slapped you." Harry managed a weak smile, his eyes slowly sliding shut. "No, no, no! Keep your eyes open! That's it, stay awake."

"Doctor, what's happened?" He couldn't wrap his head around what he was seeing; it must just be a bad dream. "You're-you're downstairs, the both of you. How is this—?"

"Wilfred, I need you to be quiet and do exactly as I say," the Doctor interrupted. "Go downstairs and outside. Don't say anything to anyone. Don't tell anyone we're up here. Just don't say a word. Go up to me and reach into the left-hand pocket of my coat. You'll find a little black metal box and bring it to me as fast as you can. Lock the front door behind you because Harry will notice, and he  _will_  try to follow you back inside. Got it?"

"But how do you know you won't stop me?"

"Because I _didn't_ stop you."

Wilf hurried back through the door and down the stairs. When he dashed out the front door, he was well aware of the way both Harry and Jack looked at him but he didn't stop. He rounded the shrubbery and saw the Doctor and Donna standing there, hugging each other. It was a moment that he wished he could have witnessed but there were more important things happening.

"Excuse me, Doctor," he said quickly and reached into his coat pocket. His fingers quickly found the little black box and pulled it out, then hurried back to the door. Everyone else simply looked at him strangely, but he saw Harry move out of the corner of his eye as he passed, just as the Doctor predicted.

"Grandfather? Wait."

He dashed back into the house, barely having enough time to lock the door before Harry reached it. He ignored the shouts that followed him and hurried back up the stairs, back to the room of blood.

"I've got it! I've got it right here." He held out the box, but the Doctor didn't take it from him.

"Open it. Twist the top to the left and pull out the piece that looks like a chisel." He looked down at Harry again, who was beginning to look less and less aware of his surroundings. "Look at that, we're gonna be fine, see?"

"Okay, I've got it!" Wilfred held up the chisel so the Doctor could see.

"Okay, good. Here, hold the cloth." The Doctor carefully laid Harry down on the floor as Wilfred took over applying pressure to the wound. "Pay attention to his breathing."

Wilfred nodded vigorously and looked down at Harry's face. He was smiling serenely, his eyes were glazed over and far away, as if they were looking at Wilfred from a dream.

"Is he dying, Doctor?" Wilfred couldn't help but ask. "What's wrong with him?"

"He's losing a lot of blood, what does it look like!?" the Doctor barked. "I need you to help me with this."

Wilfred looked up and saw the Doctor holding out his right hand, only realizing now that the middle and index fingers were missing. "Doctor, your hand!"

"It's fine, I still have them!" the Doctor interrupted, his left hand reached into the front of his shirt pocket and pulled out two severed fingers. "I can't operate with one hand. I need you to hold the flat end against the stump and slowly,  _slowly_  drag it across with the button held down. Just think of it like you're applying glue."

It was tricky to maneuver. He kept one hand holding the cloth against Harry's bleeding chest while the other handled the strange tool as the Doctor had instructed him. When he pressed the strange looking object against the stump the Doctor quickly held the matching finger against the other side, so that the tool was the only thing separating the finger from the hand. He pushed the button and slowly slid it upward until it came all the way out. The Doctor released the finger and it miraculously stayed attached.

"Good, now the other one."

They repeated the process and soon enough the Doctor had two complete hands again. No words were wasted as the Doctor took the little black box from Wilfred and went to work. Tools flipped in and out of it like some bizarre Swiss army knife as the Doctor desperately tried to close the gaping wound in Harry's chest.

"Wilfred, listen to me," the Doctor said quietly as he continued to work. "I'm going to ask you why you took my medical kit. I'm going to ask you why you even knew it was there. I'm going to ask you because I want to see if you lie to me. I already know."

"Then what do I say?"

"You tell me that you found us upstairs,  _both_  of us. You say that we're hurt but do  _not_ , under any circumstances, no matter what I say to you, tell me about what you've seen. You say we were hurt and we were bleeding, and that's  _it_."

"But what about the . . ." He gestured at the bizarre lump attached to Harry's chest, unsure of what to call it.

"Absolutely not. We were hurt, there was blood, we needed help, you brought the medical kit, and then we were fine. That is all you say. Do you understand?"

He nodded quickly. "I do."

"On Godforge I made a knife. I've forgotten about it by now, it's just sitting in my room. Tell me to give it to Harry. It's important that I give it to him, Wilfred." The Doctor paused in his work for a second to look into his eyes. "They take me first."

"Who takes you? How do we stop it?"

"Tell me that she gave us a year." The Doctor suddenly, despite everything about the situation, smiled a true and sincere smile. "A wonderful year. And you tell me not to waste a single second of it."

The bleeding had stopped, and Harry's breathing had slowed down considerably. He was pale and shaking a little, but it seemed that the worst was over. Something beeped several times and the Doctor picked up a small, round device that was sitting on the floor next to him.

"We have to go."

Wilfred quickly took a hold of Harry's hand and squeezed it tight, then put his other hand on the Doctor's shoulder and gave that a squeeze too. "My boys," he said fondly, trying to hide the fear in his voice. "Take care of each other."

Harry opened his mouth but didn't seem able to speak, giving a weak nod instead.

"We will," the Doctor promised.

Wilfred let go of them and stepped back to see them off. The Doctor made sure he had a firm grip of Harry's arm, gave a solemn nod in Wilf's direction, and then used his free hand to squeeze the device. With a flash of light, they were gone.


	31. The Doctor

Wilfred returned several minutes later with an extremely guilt look on his face and returned the Doctor's medical kit with a timid word of thanks. Jack didn't really seem bothered by it, and simply looked to the Doctor to see if anything was wanted of him. The Master stepped forward and put a hand on Wilfred's shoulder, but Wilf took a quick step away.

"You stay out of my head, Harry," he said sternly. "You can only look when I've given permission and I have not given permission."

"I wasn't going to," the Master answered quietly, a hurt look flashing across his eyes.

When he looked at the faces of those around him, the Doctor knew that he could sway this strange occurrence one way or the other. He could make a big deal out of it, demand to know what happened, and let everyone get riled up, effectively ruining the joy he hoped this day would bring . . . or not.

He chose to smile. "I think he's only missed his grandfather, Wilfred," he said softly. "Apparently a few days without you was more than he could bear."

The guilty look on Wilfred's face increased ten-fold. "Yes, of course," he quickly turned back to the Master. "Harry, my boy, come here. It's good to see you again." Wilfred pulled the Master into a hug that seemed a little too tight, but the Master didn't seem to mind. "Look at you, all spiffing!"

Jack looked at the pair with raised eyebrows and shook his head. "I've got to make a phone call," he announced. "I'll meet you back at the TARDIS." And with another curious glance at the Master, he made his way down the driveway.

The Doctor felt Donna tug on his arm gently and then she leaned towards him to whisper. "Why is the ex-Prime Minister hugging my grandad?"

The Doctor simply smiled. "It's a long story."

"I hugged him too," Donna continued. "I'm all jumbled up and don't know what's what. I don't even know who he is and first I hit him, then I hugged him. What's all that about?"

He cleared his throat and scratched at his head a little awkwardly. "That's, um . . . probably me. The time energy is being filtered out but there are still some small amounts left over, including bits of my personality."

"So . . . what, that was  _your_  reaction to seeing him?" she chuckled nervously. "You do that to all your mates? Slap 'em in the face and then say you're happy to see them? Are you gonna slap me in my face?"

"No, no, that was just what you did. I don't go about slapping people. I meant that the feeling was mine."

"So . . . what, you're scared of him?"

"I was. Still am a little bit, I suppose."

"How can you be scared of someone but still be happy to see them?"

He sighed, amazed that he could almost feeling a headache coming on already. "That's an even longer story, Donna."

"My head's all fogged up, like none of it makes any sense," Donna said slowly, her eyes carefully watching the Master as he and Wilfred muttered together. "The last couple of days I keep getting all these memories back, but not all of them are mine. They can't be."

He wondered what exactly she might have seen. "Those would be mine too."

"And there have been feelings and . . . ideas . . ." she paused and looked up at him, her eyes seeing him in a way he knew she'd never seen him before. "How are you still alive?"

He smirked. "I guess I don't know what's good for me."

"Doctor," the Master said. "We should get back to the ship and run some tests. It looks like everything is fine, but we can't be too careful."

"Yeah, we should get going."

"Well, now hold on," Donna interrupted, pointing a finger at the Master. "I don't know who you are, but I know you're not human. I can tell that much. I remember seeing all that stuff on the news about the Prime Minister going mad and disappearing, and now you're hugging my grandad like you're mates and you're an  _alien_. Who the hell are you?  _What_  are you? Do you even look like that or have you just got some human . . .  _skin_  on or something?"

"He's a Time Lord, Donna. Like me."

"He can't be. You said you were the last."

"I thought I was," he answered simply. "But I can't seem to get rid of him."

"Then what's your name? And don't give me some rubbish like the Doctor, or the Nurse, or the bleeding Librarian or something. What's your name?"

He recognized the uncertain fear in her voice and the accusation in her eyes. It was his old self bleeding through her, filled with anger and distrust. The Master must have recognized it too, because he suddenly looked extremely uncomfortable.

"His name is Harry," the Doctor said quickly, gently taking hold of her arm. "Donna, he's just Harry."

"He's not just Harry!" Donna argued. "I want to know who he is! Why doesn't he just tell me his name?"

Before the Doctor had a chance to say anything else, the Master suddenly stepped forward and grabbed Donna's hand. "Look at me."

It was a command, not a request. And the moment Donna obeyed the fury in her eyes dissipated, replaced with a look of shock.

"Alright, that's enough!" she barked after a moment, yanking her hand away from him. "I won't hit you again but I'm watching you, Spaceman!"

"Fair enough," the Master said with a quick bow of his head. "Now that we've settled that, the Doctor had high hopes for today. Let's not ruin his fun."

There were some mutters of agreement and the Master led them in the first steps back to the TARDIS. Wilfred quickened his step so that the two could walk together, quickly engaging him in a lively conversation about the events of their lives in their few days apart.

He took Donna's hand in his own and they followed at a slightly slower pace. "What did he do in your head?" he asked, muttering quietly so that the other two might not overhear him.

"Nothing. He let me look into his," Donna answered. ". . . I  _saw_  him."

He took a deep breath, trying to imagine what that would look like to a human. "What was that like?"

"Well, now I understand why you were afraid of him," she leaned closer and whispered. "There's a monster in him. There were plenty of nice things but it's still there, in the deep. Like an animal in the dark."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "And that made you feel better about him?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Because what I saw in him is a lot like what I see in you," she looked down at her feet. "Except he didn't try to hide it."

He knew that Donna had never been naive. Where many of his other companions had such faith in him that the weight of their expectations could be crushing, Donna had never fallen under the spell of such illusions. She had known from the day she met him that he had darkness in him, just like everyone else. And sometimes a bit more than everyone else.

Still, despite her squeezing his hand reassuringly, he had never felt so self-conscious in her presence.

Jack was already waiting at the TARDIS, standing in front of its doors as if he were standing guard over it. When they approached he smiled widely and pushed the door open behind him. "Ladies first," he said pleasantly, smiling at Donna. Wilfred paused his story about learning pub songs from an old Russian scientist long enough to thank Jack before he stepped through the door and carried on talking to the Master excitedly.

The Doctor knew that the TARDIS had been locked when he left and that Jack didn't have a key. Jack nodded his head towards the door behind him just before he stepped inside, letting the Doctor get a clear view at that which he was hiding.

There was blood on the door. A little bit was smeared around the lock and a couple of clear fingerprints on the wood, where the door had been pushed open. He had a pretty good idea of who it belonged to, but he wanted to make sure. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped up the blood quickly, then shoved the soiled cloth back into his pocket for later examination.

The door had been successfully unlocked, so he would have assumed that whoever came for a visit had gone inside, but he saw no further traces of blood. As casually as possible, his eyes scanned the floor, the handrails, the console—anywhere he thought a wounded person might have left a track. But there was not the slightest hint of blood.

"Master," he said loudly, interrupting Wilfred's story. "Would you get Donna started on her tests? I just wanted to chat with Wilfred a bit and hear about any symptoms she's been showing."

"Sure thing," the Master answered, though his eyes scanned the Doctor carefully. "We'll meet you in the lab then."

"Anything I can do, Doctor?" Jack asked.

"Yeah, some of the security scanners have been a bit on the fritz lately. Think you could have a look at them for me?"

"You got it."

It was nice to have someone like Jack around who understood what was actually wanted of him and didn't ask questions. If anyone was still in the TARDIS, Jack would find them. And in the mean time, he could speak to Wilfred alone.

"Why did you take my medical kit, Wilfred?"

Wilfred visibly tensed, but there was no way he wasn't expecting to be asked. "There was an injury. Someone needed my help."

"How did you know it was in my pocket? How did you even know what it was? This isn't Earth technology."

Wilfred stood tall and looked him in the eye. "Because you told me."

He had known that much already, but he still couldn't help taking in a quick breath when he heard the actual words. "You saw me?"

"And Harry," Wilf nodded quickly. "From the future."

"Who was injured?"

"Both of you," Wilf answered a little too quickly for his liking, like he had already practiced this. "You both looked quite rough, and there was quite a bit of bleeding. But I brought you the medical kit and you had the bleeding stopped quick enough and everything seemed alright."

"What type of injuries?"

"I'm not supposed to say."

"What type of injuries, Wilfred?" he repeated, louder this time.

"You told me not to say," Wilf answered stubbornly. "But you did say to tell you that it's very important that you give Harry the knife you made on Godforge. And you said that she gives you a year, and that you're not to waste a second of it."

It was a relief and a disaster at the same time. A year was a lot longer than he would have thought but it could still pass in the blink of an eye. Did that mean he could relax, at least for tonight? Could he enjoy his evening without looking over his shoulder, waiting for something to come creeping from the shadows?

"Who is she?"

"I don't know."

"I had to have told you something. Maybe you don't even think it was important, but I must have said  _something_." So much information could be in the tiniest detail and Wilfred was the only one who knew. "I need you to tell me everything. Don't tell me the censored version that I gave you; tell me everything. I want to know exactly what you saw, what I did, and what I said."

"I already told you, Doctor—"

"Listen to me, Wilfred," he interrupted, feeling the anger rising up in him. "Really listen to me, because this is important. Not so long ago, I met a past version of myself—a version from before the war. Do you know what I did?"

Wilfred shook his head slowly.

"Nothing. I did absolutely nothing. I made stupid jokes about his hair and the way he dressed. I didn't tell him about the war, or my planet being destroyed. I didn't warn him of anything that was coming or tell him how to save anyone. I didn't tell him how to save even  _one_. I didn't tell him that all of my family—all of my _children_ are _dead!_ " he suddenly realized that he was shouting and quickly tried to regain control over himself, starting over again. He took a deep breath and started again, slowly. "The last time I faced my future, a woman died. I barely knew her, but she knew so much about me . . . I know that she meant more to my future self than I can imagine. He intervened to an extent, but he still didn't save her life. He just made death a little easier for her. And she had no idea."

Wilfred's eyes were tearing up. "Doctor, I'm sorry."

"I know what I do when I meet my past selves, and I am not kind."

"Doctor, I'm telling you, you were fine," Wilfred repeatedly tearfully. "We used the medical kit and fixed you both up. The bleeding had stopped and you were both still alive. Isn't that all that matters?"

"And where were you?"

"I was standing right there."

"No, where was your future self? Why weren't you with us?"

"I don't know," Wilfred answered with a nervous chuckle. "Probably left me at home, I expect."

It would be nice to believe that. As he looked into those kind blue eyes he wanted nothing more than to be able to simply shrug it off and agree. Wilfred was at home and he was safe. The Master and himself had put an end to the madness and escaped with nothing more than a few easily fixed wounds. What a beautiful universe that could be.

"I'm sure you're right," he said, trying his best to smile.

Jack swept back into the room. "The security system seems to be working just fine, Doctor."

He welcomed the distraction and quickly turned away from Wilfred. "How about the memory banks?"

"All clear."

"Hardware?"

"I did find something interesting that might help you figure out what's been causing your problem. I'll show you later."

The scanners didn't show anyone on the ship who shouldn't be there and any footage the cameras might have caught had been erased. Jack had found physical evidence—maybe a dropped item or some hair, but most likely blood. He could search it for DNA just to be sure that his momentary houseguests hadn't been someone he might not expect.

"Thank you, Jack," he said, trying hard to push all those unhappy thoughts away. "Then I should join Donna and the Master for her tests. If all goes well, which it should, then we'll probably be taking Donna and Wilf out for a bit of fun tonight. Want to come?"

"How can I refuse when you say it like that?"

He rolled his eyes but chuckled all the same. Jack was un-aging and un-withering. After all the years he had lived and all the things he had seen, Jack hadn't changed much. He still grinned effortlessly and still couldn't resist a flirtatious joke when it presented itself.

It was refreshing, really. Life was too full of chaos and change. It was nice to know at least one person who ignored the tide of time and carried on exactly as he had always been.

The Doctor was not ready to change again. He wasn't ready to turn into a man of worry or fear or war. For now, he just wanted to stay the way he was. He wanted to enjoy the company of his friends and feel the love of his partner. He wanted to fret over the Master's health and sneak into his bedroom at night and wonder how far the next touch would go. He wanted to be young and alive and in love, even if it was just for a little while.

So he took a tip from Jack and painted a smirk across his face. "You think I would let you refuse?"


	32. The Doctor

By some miracle, nothing had gone wrong. There was nothing to suggest that Donna's mind was having difficulty or suffering damage, and the time energy was being harmlessly filtered away. The Doctor even had a peek inside her mind and, though there was plenty of confusion and some leftover parts of him inside, he saw nothing worrisome.

The Master tried to stay professional as they worked, but the Doctor could tell that the other Time Lord was brimming with pride. His homegrown remedy, prepared in just a little over a month, had worked marvellously. The man was a genius, the Doctor had never denied that, but he still secretly revelled in the proof.

"So that's it?" Donna asked when silence had fallen. "I'm not gonna burn or blow up or anything?"

"No," he answered, grinning. "You're fine."

Wilfred suddenly grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into a tight hug, tears rolling down his wrinkled cheeks. "Thank you! Thank you so much," he sniffled and then quickly released him to take hold of the Master. "Oh, you brilliant boys! Thank you!"

The Master's cheeks burned red, but the Doctor knew that he must have been enjoying being the hero for once. The Doctor was just glad that Jack was here to see it—to see the happiness that had been created with the Master's own hands.

"Does that mean we can go somewhere to celebrate?" Donna asked loudly, her voice bubbling with excitement. "You said if I was okay then we’d go somewhere to celebrate. We can go, right?"

"Yes, yes," he answered happily. "Wherever you want."

"Disneyland!" she practically shouted in glee. "Grandad said he's always wanted to go to Disneyland and this is my first time travelling with him in the TARDIS."

The Doctor’s eyes travelled over to Wilfred, who looked slightly embarrassed but also pleased, and then he noticed that the Master seemed to be trying to hide a smile. Had Disneyland been on the Master's list of places to go too?

"Sounds wonderful," he said with a nod of his head. Donna gave an excited little squeal and threw her arms around his neck while the Master whispered something in Wilfred's ear. It actually did seem like the perfect way to start off the year on that ticking clock—a place of innocence and happiness.

"Master, why don't you take this lot to the kitchen and grab a quick bite before we head out? Jack and I will tidy this up."

The Master looked at him hesitantly, with eyes shifting in suspicion at the human that he found so very repulsive. The Doctor simply raised his eyebrow and gave him a stern look to get the Master to usher the other two out reluctantly. Jack didn't need to be told what they were doing; the second the door shut he pulled a plastic bag from his pocket and handed it over. The swabs inside had definitely picked up blood.

"Those two seem to get along well," Jack said casually. "Wilfred and your, ahem, partner."

He pulled the handkerchief from his own pocket that had the blood from the door and took it and Jack's samples over to the DNA analyzer. "Yes," he answered, feeding the machine his samples and stirring it to life. "I was angry with him in the beginning, and I didn't trust him in the slightest. Wilfred was the only person he could speak with comfortably for quite a while. They just played cards or checkers all day and swapped stories like old men do . . . they've grown quite close."

"It's just weird, you know? After the Year That Never Was . . . seeing him like this—"

"Being lovely, making friends, and acting like an almost normal person? I know. It still freaks me out sometimes too. For a while I thought it was all a ruse to get me to lower my defenses."

Jack chuckled and crossed his arms. "What changed your mind?"

He pulled his glasses from his pocket and slipped them on, squinting at the screen in front of him as the results came up. "He jumped on me, pinned me down, and held a knife to my throat."

"Sounds like my kind of party."

He couldn't help but smile a little. "Well, he's definitely not boring anyway."

"Can I ask you a question, Doctor?"

"Sure."

"Why him?" Jack asked, his eyes heavy with the unsaid remainder of that question. "I always figured that you had Rose and that after she was gone . . . I didn't think that you would ever forget her."

"I didn't forget her," he hissed back. He may have moved on, but the wounds Rose left behind had still not quite healed and he didn't like them being poked at. "I'm still with her, it's just not this part of me. It's not like I left her on the side of the road alone and never went back."

"I know, I know," Jack said quickly, trying to calm him down. "That's not what I meant. I just meant that I thought you would need more time."

"I did too," he leaned his back against the machine as it worked and looked up at the ceiling. "But then I realized that that's my problem. I take too much time. Then, when I finally decide that I'm ready for something, it's too late. So I held my breath and jumped in."

"But after the things he's done, Doctor . . . I was there. I saw the things he did to you."

"I killed his family, Jack," he interrupted. "I killed his parents. He had a sister and two brothers too and, though he'd never admit it, he was very fond of them. I killed his old school friends and all the people he worked with. I took his home and turned it into nothing but memories and the faintest traces of ash. He woke up from the nightmares of the war and he just wanted to go home, but he couldn't. It's all gone, and I did it . . . but he still loves me."

"Everyone loves you." Jack's voice was growing quieter now, a bit defeated.

"A lot of those people . . . if they actually knew me, I don't think they would." He looked Jack in the eye now. "The Master and I are two sides of the same coin. We understand each other completely, even through all our masks and mistakes, and he loves me just the same. He's a good man . . . he's just done a lot of bad things."

Jack's eyes suddenly changed, dawning with a strange look of understanding. "You're a good man too."

He felt the corner of his mouth tug upward into a grim smile. Jack had never been afraid to stand up and speak his mind to anyone, but he never really questioned the Doctor. The Doctor had never had to explain himself to Jack, with the exception of why he only carried a sonic screwdriver, or justify his actions. Everything he did or said was accepted because Jack seemed to believe that the Doctor was the greatest man alive.

But Jack didn't really know him.

The machine beeped to announce that it had finished, mercifully breaking the tense silence. He turned to look at the screen and read the results, being careful to avoid looking in Jack's eyes again.

"It's mine . . . and the Master's," he said miserably, even though he had known that before he had even done the test. "It's our blood."

"But that's good," Jack insisted, quickly clearing his throat and standing up straight again. "You made it to the TARDIS so, if you were being chased, then you got away. You got inside where you would have had access to all of your equipment, medical and otherwise. And then you managed to get out before we got back. I don't think you could have done that if something terrible had happened."

Jack's words inspired a thought. "But where would we go?"

"What do you mean?"

"We clearly didn't simply waltz in and out the door of Wilfred's house so we must have teleported somehow, and then teleported from there to the TARDIS. If I was looking for somewhere safe, somewhere to heal, where would I go after we left?"

"But I checked all the scanners. There's no one else on the ship."

"I'm clever, Jack, and it's a very large ship."

Jack smirked and nodded in agreement. "Then I'll think of something."

"Thank you."

He made sure to stall the others in the kitchen for as long as he could without raising suspicion, hoping it would give Jack the time he needed. When they finally made their way to the console room, Jack was already waiting for them. He gave the Doctor a wink as they came in, letting him know that everything was ready.

"Everyone, hold on tight," the Master announced. "It's going to be bumpy."

"It's always bumpy," Donna replied.

"I'm going to make a wild guess and say that it's going to be a bit more than usual. Just hold on."

It had been a strange enough thing to say, but it was stranger when the Master turned out to be right. The TARDIS gave him a hell of a time with the landing, shaking like mad and wailing at him. Something was upsetting her signal, like she couldn't quite perceive the landing spot, and she wouldn't set down until the Doctor had changed her coordinates to land a quarter of a mile away.

He glanced over at the Master and saw him grinning. "I told you."

The sounds of awe that came from both Donna and Wilfred when he opened the doors were immensely satisfying. Night had already fallen but the world was alive with light and music. He explained to them that he had cheated a bit and not actually taken them to Disneyland. Instead he had jumped a couple of centuries into the future to the very first Disney _planet_.

"You know how it works," he said with a shrug. "Humanity can't do a single thing without some corporation or another using it for a gimmick. We're actually on what is otherwise known as the planet of Hennoi. It's small, smaller than Earth's moon, but makes for a great amusement park. It's exactly three hundred years since the opening of the very first park on Earth so . . ."

Something caught his eye. A man walked by wearing a mustard yellow suit and a hot pink top hat. He wasn't an employee, just a man in a strange outfit. It stood out to him more than it should, but he couldn't remember why.

"I know," he heard the Master mutter in his ear.

"So do we need to get passes or something?" Donna asked.

It was distracting, watching that pink hat travel through the crowd like some sort of beacon, but he managed to find his voice again. "No, everything gets checked at the shuttle stations before you even set foot on the planet, a bit like an airport. Everyone will assume we've been cleared like everyone else here."

There were so many people. Despite being so far from Earth, there were so many humans and variations of humans. The Doctor remembered once more why he found them so amazing.

"I think I'll find my way to someplace I can get a drink," Jack said, clapping the Doctor on the shoulder. "I'll see you around, or else I'll meet you back here."

"Yeah, sure. Hold on a second." His hands dove into his pockets and he fished out a handful of ear pieces. "Everyone take one of these. If we get separated or if we split up, we can all still communicate."

"Afraid I'll get lost?" Jack smirked as he took one.

"I don't want to get stuck looking for you if you find somewhere else to spend the night. Make sure you tell us if you run off with someone."

"Same goes for you," Jack answered with a wink and then looked directly at the Master. "Have fun tonight, guys."

Jack vanished into the crowd and the two Time Lords paused to help Donna and Wilf figure out how to use their communicators. The TARDIS doors rattled behind them and the Doctor's head whipped around quickly to see a young man trying to open it.

"Oi!" the Master barked at him. "What you playing at, boy?"

"Sorry, mate," the man said with a pleasant grin and quickly stepped away from it. "Wrong door."

"He was a looker!" Donna exclaimed as the man hurried off into the crowd. "You shouldn't have scared him off, Harry!"

"You're married!" Wilf cried out.

"Jack would have got him before you anyway," the Doctor answered as he stepped up to the TARDIS door again and double-checked that it was locked. "Now then, did you want to see shows, go shopping, or try out some of the rides?"

He didn't see the man in the pink hat again, but as they travelled through the sea of strangers he couldn't shake off the feeling that he had forgotten something. While his human companions cried out in awe at the wonderful things surrounding them and he glimpsed the Master's smirking face in the ever-changing light, he knew there was something just beyond his grasp.

Joyful music filled the air and he hadn't been paying much attention to it until it changed to something a bit louder and exciting. The Master's hand slipped into his own to pull him through the blur of light and sound and something clicked together in his mind. He was literally reliving a memory.

"Excuse me."

He turned back to look and saw Wilfred a few feet behind them where he had been stopped. That kind, old face smiled up at the two strangers who had stopped him so suddenly and asked what they needed.

"Can you tell us where we are?" asked the shorter one with the pointed nose and the dark, swept back hair.

Wilfred chuckled a bit. "You mean you don't know? How could you get here without knowing?"

"It just sort of happened," answered the other—a good six feet tall with pale skin and bright blue eyes, black hair curling around his ears.

As Wilfred spoke to them the Doctor's eyes travelled downward and saw that the two men had their hands joined together, and he remembered. He remembered a night that was alive with sound and light. He remembered walking together through a sea swimming with beings that looked just like them but didn't hold a single speck of time energy in them. There was music in the air, and in the happy chaos he had taken hold of the Master's hand so as not to lose him.

He remembered grabbing a man by the sleeve to ask him where they were.

The Master's hand squeezed his own a bit tighter. "Do you see them?"

"Yes," he answered breathlessly. "Why don't they see us?"

"You were too busy looking at Wilfred," the Master whispered in his ear. "And I was too busy looking at you . . . the man who stole a TARDIS and whisked me away into the stars."

It was true. Those blue eyes were only focused on the man beside him, full of admiration and wonder.

The Doctor cleared his throat. "I borrowed it."

He remembered the day that he walked into that museum and saw the most beautiful thing in all the world. He couldn't help but touch it, couldn't help but go inside when he found the door unlocked, and couldn't help but test to see if the controls worked. And who would he go with when he sailed off into the stars?

The only person he could think of was the strange boy who lived in the fields at the base of the mountain that was afraid to go to the academy and loved to hide in the woods. He thought of the quiet teenager who was far too clever for his peers, spoke about living things as though they were magical for simply existing, and dared to defy every Time Lord who challenged him. He thought of that young man who had become a master of terraforming younger than anyone else in history for the simple joy he found in it. Who else could he possibly take with him?

"This was always meant to happen," he said quietly, watching as Wilfred shook their hands and said goodbye. "From the first night I took the TARDIS, we were meant to be here, together. Everything else, my other future . . . it was only because I lost this one."

The Master squeezed his hand again. "We're back on the right track."

He felt like a great weight had been lifted from him, and his next breath was so much easier. His survival had not disrupted the flow of time after all, or created another doomed fate like he had to Captain Brooke. This had made it right. He was exactly where he was meant to be, right from the very start.

Perhaps Professor Song would find another man to love and keep on living with him, just like Rose did.

"Lovely chaps," Wilfred said merrily, approaching them again. "Oddest thing though, they didn't know where they were. I thought it was funny because you said you had to get checked and everything before you even got on the planet, but I figured maybe they'd had a bit too much to drink or something."

The Master smiled knowingly. "It just sort of happens sometimes, doesn't it?"

They spent a couple of hours exploring. Donna shopped a bit while Wilfred had fun forcing everyone into trying on bizarre hats, and they stopped several times to watch parades or street performers. They ran into Jack, thoroughly enjoying himself with a young man and two girls who were all dressed in similar, shimmering outfits.

"They're acrobats!" Jack called out happily as they passed and gave them a thumbs up. "Very flexible!" Surprisingly, the Master raised his thumb in response as they left.

During one of Wilfred's mandatory stops to try on costumes, the Doctor was busy peeling a stick-on flesh mask off when he heard the Master laugh.

"You look splendid, Harry!" Wilfred proclaimed. "Doesn't he, Doctor? Looks good with the suit, I should say."

He peeled off the rest of his mask and looked, seeing the Master before him with a brown fedora and a long scarf with multi-coloured stripes. "I don't know, Wilf," he answered with a grin. "I think that looks more like something I would wear."

Wilf looked back and forth between the two of them before declaring, "No, I don't think so. It looks good on Harry."

Donna laughed quite suddenly at the sight of him, and held out an empty hand. "Would you like a jelly baby?"

"What the devil does that mean?" Wilfred asked, knitting his eyebrows together.

After that, Wilfred announced that it was time to try some of the rides. The Doctor was the only one willing to join him on the carousel "for the sake of old times", as Wilf put it. The Doctor insisted on going on some of the water track rides where everyone got splashed a lot while he revelled in the glory of grown-ups allowing their fancy clothes to get sopping wet. Donna practically ran for the air tours, where they got strapped into individual harnesses and dangled from a track, like the underbelly of some great serpent, which carried them all over the park for stunning views and told them some of the park's history. After much coaxing and a few white lies about the current technology, the Master convinced Wilfred to go on one of the jumping roller-coasters that were so popular during that particular century. Where roller-coasters used to climb a hill and then ride down the other side, a jumping coaster raced upward to a spot where the track ended, flew freely through the air for a little distance, and was pulled onto the landing track with a manipulated gravity field. Donna got sick when the four of them had their feet back on the ground and Wilf, though a bit green in the face, laughed about how exciting it was.

It was then decided that some rest was needed to let everyone's stomachs find their way back to their rightful place. They got themselves a table at a restaurant, set outside where they could take in the fresh air. There were lights strung up all around, mimicking the style of 'Old' Earth, while a whole group of musicians played near an area set aside for dancing. The Doctor watched the small crowd gracefully move about the dance floor in time with the music and smiled as they settled into their seats.

The waiter took their orders for drinks and told them that there was a fireworks display due in half an hour, and that their restaurant boasted one of the best watching spots. They spent a while talking about what they'd done so far, laughing at the fact that Donna threw up and how both the Master and Wilf had snatched a pile of logo stickers from a customer service desk and had been secretly sticking them to the backs of strangers that they passed.

"I win though, because that one bloke turned and saw you," Wilf announced, waving a finger at the Master.

"He did not! He was looking at the fountain behind me."

"He saw you," Donna agreed with a knowing nod of her head.

"He turned much too late. There's no way he saw me, did he, Doctor?"

He found himself grinning, finding it amusing that the Master expected him to side with him just because they were a couple. "I'm pretty sure he saw you."

"Oh, liars, the lot of you!"

"You say whatever you want, but we all saw what happened," Wilf said with a chuckle while he finished the last of his pint. "Just gonna pop to the loo. I think my socks are still a bit damp from that water drop we went on."

They spent a moment listening to the ongoing music, enjoying the peace of it. It was a beautiful night, made better by good company. The Doctor couldn't quite remember the last time he had felt so relaxed. He wasn't thinking about the next great adventure, or what trouble might be brewing ahead. He was just thinking about now and what a wonderful day it had been

"Nice bit of music," the Master said with a happy sigh. "Anyone fancy a dance?"

He watched Donna's eyes flick over to him, a little unsure of what to say. "You're not dancing with me, sunshine," she said quickly, lifting her left hand to show off her ring again.

"Suit yourself," the Master said quite happily. "Doctor?"

He looked back at Donna again, who simply shrugged and tossed her hair over her shoulder as she reached for her drink. "Go on then! He wasn't asking me anyway."

A large part of him felt a bit embarrassed and wanted to tell the Master to shut up and sit down, but another part felt a little happy flutter in his stomach. "I . . . I think I'm a bit too old for dancing," he muttered hesitantly.

"But not tonight, Doctor," the Master insisted, holding out his hand now. "Tonight, we are young."

He looked up into that charming grin and his mind raced back to the loving look in the blue eyes he'd seen earlier. The young and giddy and excited Doctor in his head took over and his hand found its way to the Master's. He could feel the skin of his face stretching as he grinned, and the way Donna rolled her eyes while hiding a smile behind her drink told him that there was no point to pretend he wasn't happy.

He quickly shrugged off his coat, not wanting to wear something so bulky on the floor and deciding that their suits would complement each other better. The Master led him right through the crowd of dancing couples to the center, and he half expected him to do something crazy like start clearing them out. But not tonight.

The Master took his hand and pulled him close, each of them finding a spot on the other's hip to rest their second hand. And for once, that absolutely mad and wonderfully clever man had nothing to say. The Master had no jokes to make or riddles to weave right now. All he did was smile.

The Doctor couldn't help but think that somewhere out there, their young and foolish selves were wandering together. He wanted to find them and tell them not to wait. To take the chances they were given and not let their time go to waste. If only he had known, back on that first night away from home, what he was missing, he might never have let the Master leave.

"You knew we would be here," he said quietly. "The other us, I mean."

"It was right after you brought Wilfred onto the TARDIS," The Master nodded. "I looked at his face and I remembered seeing it before. Then I remembered coming here with you and the night we had . . . it was something I had to look forward to. As soon as Donna said Disneyland I knew you still didn't remember and that you would bring us straight here."

The same place, at the same moment. He had punched the coordinates in without even thinking because they were already in his head. That was why the TARDIS had fought him in the landing—because he was trying to land her somewhere she was already standing.

He almost felt hypnotised, looking into those brown eyes. This was how it was meant to be. This is how it should have always been.

He wasn't sure who kissed whom, but somehow their lips found each other. In the blurring swirls of movement from the other dancers and the slow singing of a violin, everything else in the universe stopped for just a moment. On a planet crawling with far too many people and on a dance floor with hundreds of eyes, they were all alone. All that existed in all of space and time was just the two of them, in this exact moment.

He could stay in that moment forever.

After they had separated and the music began to slow down towards its end, the Master could not control the grin on his face. "I'm getting to you," he said merrily, as the first firework burst in the sky above them. "Aren't I?"

He didn't need to answer. The Master already knew.


	33. The Master

The Master couldn't remember seeing anything quite so satisfying. Even watching the Doctor squirm beneath him in feverish lust in the console room hadn't been quite as wonderful to watch as it was to watch the change in the Doctor's eyes under the light of the fireworks.

"I'm getting to you," he couldn't help but say. "Aren't I?"

The Doctor might not have given him an answer, but he didn't really need one. He knew those eyes well enough to know the thoughts behind them. To the Doctor, falling in love was one of the most terrifying things in the universe but, as hard as he might fight putting his feet on that slippery slope, it was clear to see that it was too late. It would take time and most certainly a few more tests of loyalty, but he had him.

They stayed out on the dance floor to watch the fireworks, hand in hand with their eyes looking up to the sky, just like when they were children. Everyone clapped and cheered when the display was over and the musicians resumed their work.

"We should get back to the others," the Doctor said as the dance floor began to writhe to life again.

Wilfred was back at the table when they emerged from the crowd, curiously examining the neon purple drink Donna had in her hands. "Where have you two been?" he asked when he looked up and saw them approach.

He knew the Doctor would be too embarrassed to answer, so he spoke instead. "Just a dance, Grandfather. Donna turned me down, but the Doctor was kind enough to oblige."

"Oh, Donna, you can't be in a place like this and not dance," Wilfred said with a shake of his head. "Tell you what, you dance with the Doctor and I'll dance with Harry."

"You'll what?" Donna nearly spit up her drink.

"When in Rome, darling," Wilf said happily, pulling himself up from the table. "I've danced with you and your mum before, how is it any different?"

No matter how much time he spent with the old man, the Master couldn't get used to how sweet he was. In the time when Wilfred was born, dancing with a man would have been absolutely absurd, but he was one of those rare types who embraced new ways. He could hear the happy little thoughts buzzing about him, thinking that Time Lords weren't concerned with gender and that it was only polite that he ask the Master to dance too.

"We'll do one and then we'll swap, yeah?" Wilf said as he led them back to the dance floor. "I want a dance with each of the kids."

It was a little strange but the two of them laughed at each other as the Master tried to teach him how to dance with another man. Wilf insisted on doing silly little things like standing on his toes so that the Master could spin around, much like you would see an old man dancing with a child.

He peeked across the floor to see the Doctor and Donna dancing together, both slightly pink in the cheeks but smiling all the same. They spoke to each other as they danced, at one point making each other laugh so hard that they stumbled over each other's feet and nearly fell.

When the song was over, the Master made sure to bow graciously with a theatrical sweep of his arm, which Wilf mimicked. He stood and waited as Wilf hurried over to the other two, took Donna by the hand, and shooed the Doctor back in his direction.

The Doctor was still pretty relaxed during their second dance, though a little less cozy. He seemed to be very aware of the fact that his companions could see him this time, so the Master thought that it was probably best to refrain from kissing him this time. They talked about the fireworks display and how funny it was that, despite being ten times his age, Wilf still referred to them as the 'kids' or 'boys'.

"Did you know we're thirty years out of sync?" the Doctor mentioned, wrinkling his nose up in a funny way. "I don't know why, but I just assumed that our timelines matched up. I mean, it's not much, but it's still a bit odd."

"Who's older now?"

"You are," the Doctor answered. "I'm only nine hundred and six."

"Just one more reason that you should do as I say."

The Doctor smirked and shook his head. "Good luck with that."

When the song was over, Wilf bustled over again, a little out of breath now. "Your turn, Doctor!" he announced happily, grabbing the Master by the arm and physically pulling him away. "Harry, you go dance with Donna now. There's a good lad."

He knew that Donna felt a little uneasy around him, and he couldn't blame her if she had jumbled bits of the Doctor's memory in her head. "I don't bite," he promised as he held out his hand. He decided not to add the truthful 'anymore'.

"Good, 'cause I'd bite you right back," Donna promised in turn, and accepted his hand.

It was a little slow to start, both of them standing a little too stiffly and unsure of what to say. It wasn't until they saw Wilfred unsuccessfully attempt to twirl the far too tall Doctor that they were able to relax a bit.

"I'm sorry about my grandad," Donna said with a smile, watching as the Doctor twirled Wilf instead. "He doesn't know when to quit sometimes."

"It's all good fun," he answered truthfully.

". . . You call him Grandfather."

"Does it bother you?"

"A little." Suddenly she gave herself a bit of a shake all over, trying to loosen herself up. "So, have you got a problem with me in particular or are you just rubbish at dancing with women?"

She said it with a smile on her face and so he took it as a challenge. It wasn't until she said it that he realized he actually hadn't danced with a woman since he'd danced with Lucy, but she always used to say she loved how he could dance. He pulled out some of his old tricks, nothing too complicated that Donna would wind up tripping over trying to keep up, but just enough to impress her.

At the end of it she was laughing, and the Doctor and Wilfred gave them some applause from their end of the floor. He gave Donna a bow, the same way he had to Wilfred, and she responded with a polite curtsy. They had just enough time to catch their breath back at the table before their dinner arrived.

Donna and Wilfred really had no idea what any of the food was, so it became more of a shared table. The plates all got pushed towards the center and everyone took bits from here and there, sampling everything until they found their favourites.

When the waiter next came over Donna pulled a camera from her purse and asked him to take a photo. He had no idea how to use it so there were a few minutes of Donna trying to show him before it got done. It turned out well—Wilf had his arm around Donna on his right, then around the Doctor on his left, stretching past him to reach the Master too. They looked quite squished together in the photo, but everyone had a genuine smile on their face.

It finally was decided that it was time to go back to the TARDIS. After a quick chat over his communicator, the Doctor told them that they would stay landed for the night and Jack would find them in the morning.

It seemed to be a very long walk back with tired legs and full stomachs, but they did get there eventually. The Doctor showed Donna into her old room and she disappeared inside after giving everyone a hug goodnight. The Master was rather pleasantly surprised when he got a hug too. Wilf followed her example, saying a quick goodnight and going into his own room.

He expected the Doctor to say goodnight, maybe even give him a kiss, and vanish. But he didn't. He stood there, in front of his door, simply looking at him and smiling a little.

"You tired?" the Doctor asked after a moment.

"A bit, yeah," he answered with a shrug of his shoulders.

The Doctor paused, looking a bit awkward. "So . . . are you liking your room better? You know, now that you've got that thing on the wall . . ."

"Yeah, it's growing on me." He raised his eyebrow, looking into those shy brown eyes and thinking he knew what the Doctor was having trouble trying to say. "It's lucky, really, because the walls are thin, so Wilfred can hear everything and then he just comes in if he hears something out of the ordinary. It's good if I'm having an attack, you see."

"Oh, yes." The Doctor nodded as though this were somehow news to him. "Yes, that is lucky actually because  _some_  of the rooms, like mine for example, are actually quite sound proof."

God, the man was like some virgin teenager sometimes. "I don't think I've seen your room yet."

"Oh, haven't you?" the Doctor asked innocently, opening the door behind him a little. "Did you want to see it?"

There was no point playing the Doctor's game anymore. The Master grabbed his hand and pushed the door open, pulling the Doctor in with him. If there was one thing he had learned by now, it was that the Doctor usually preferred not to make the first move. Despite how loud and expressive he could be, the Doctor was shy at his core and had been since he was a child. All his life, he had drawn people around him that had tendencies to be impulsive, bossy, and not afraid to put him in his place—his friends, his women, and the Master himself.

He knew that when he pushed the Doctor back against the closed door and pinned his wrists against it, that the Doctor would not protest. They explored each other's mouths enthusiastically and the narin quickly began to seep in and take hold.

He was surprised that, once he had broken past the illusion of innocence, the Doctor suddenly grew impatient. He slid out of his coat and jacket and threw them on the floor as if they were something offensive, then his hands shot to the Master's body and began plucking at the buttons of his vest.

He liked to see the urgency in the Doctor, but he couldn't resist the temptation to tease him. "Now, now, hold on a second," he said, pushing the Doctor's hands away from him. "I thought you were going to show me your room?"

For a second the Doctor just glared at him, not in the slightest bit amused, before he started pulling his own tie off. "Get a good look then, here it is," he muttered, tossing the tie aside and kicking off his shoes. "Sorry about the mess. Anything else you want to see?"

It was so amusing to watch. The Doctor was so used to people fawning over him that he probably wasn't used to working for it. A master at playing hard-to-get would just have to snap his fingers and his loyal companions would fall to their knees before him. With someone like Jack, he wouldn't even need to do that much.

"What are you taking your clothes off for? I thought I was going to get a proper tour."

"Oh, you're going to," the Doctor practically growled at him.

The Doctor didn't like making the first move, but apparently every move after that was fair game. It came down to simple height then; the Doctor was taller than him with longer limbs, and it made it difficult to gain control over him. The Doctor was kissing him again, and his hands explored daringly.

Part of him wanted to resist and make a game out of it—make the Doctor beg  _him_  for once. But it wasn't as easy as he might have thought. His mind had raced back to their moment in the TARDIS by the kitchen so many times that day, thinking about it just like the Doctor had told him to.

His newest body had yet to experience sex and had been anticipating this all day, making it difficult to control himself. "Doctor," he gasped between kisses, his voice sounding stern but his hands betraying him as they happily touched the other body. "Listen to your Master."

The Doctor ripped the Master's tie free and pushed open his unbuttoned shirt. "Not today."

He looked into those brown eyes and was pleasantly surprised to see that both his pupils had blown. The Doctor's eagerness had meant a quick acceptance of the narin's full influence. The Doctor was ready, and there was no turning him back now.

"My house, my rules."

He'd waited too long for this anyway. When the Doctor kissed him again he welcomed the narin and let it take over. His mind flooded with the Doctor until it overflowed into the room around him. There were images of fireworks and the joy of a long overdue dance. He felt the thrill of the day when the Doctor kissed him for the first time and could almost feel the loose tendrils of freshly cut hair slipping through his fingers. He felt a sudden surge of pleasure and every nerve in his body lit up as the Doctor's memory of his experience on the control room floor passed through him.

His shirt was gone now, as was the Doctor's. He let his hand slide around to the Doctor's shevra, staring into the blackness of those dilated pupils and swearing that he could see the whole of the universe in there. He must have said something out loud because the Doctor chuckled and began to push him backwards.

It was a treacherous floor to navigate and he nearly fell several times, but eventually the backs of his legs found the bedside. "Take them off," he ordered, pushing the Doctor's hands away from him.

The Doctor was quick to oblige, too far gone in the narin to care about playing games. He pulled his own trousers off in a flash before grasping at the Master's and trying to get them undone just as fast. Their thoughts were so blended together that he wasn't sure if it was his own idea to take hold of the Doctor or if he had been asked but, either way, the Doctor gasped appreciatively as his hand moved along the length of him.

The Doctor pushed him down on the bed and climbed on after him, hovering above him and letting his mouth work along the Master's neck. He could feel the Doctor pushing his knees apart and he tried to push him back, to roll him over and change positions.

"Don't, don't," The Doctor whispered, gently moving his hands away. "Let me. Just let me."

There was too much of the Doctor in his mind to resist, and he imagined that there must have been too much of himself in the Doctor's mind for him to accept any resistance. They were so blended that he could practically see himself through the Doctor's eyes, staring up at him with wild, dilated pupils and slowly giving in.

His knees parted and the Doctor quickly positioned himself, hands sliding down the backs of the Master's thighs to gently guide his legs to the optimal position. "Just lie back," the Doctor said quietly, delivering soft kisses to his lips. "Relax."

His body had recognized the invading narin as belonging to a male and had prepared itself accordingly. Where a human might have felt significant pain, he only felt a mild discomfort when the Doctor entered him. His muscles tensed and he gasped at the feeling that was entirely new to this body, and, for a moment, he couldn't quite remember how to move. When the Doctor's mouth met his own again it was like closing a circuit and his entire body was alive.

It only took a few of the Doctor's movements for his body to adjust to his size and the discomfort was gone, leaving only the pleasure behind. In the haze of every feeling and emotion being shared between them he didn't have to say anything for the Doctor to know he was being too gentle and to speed up.

The added force created friction between his shevra and the sheets beneath him, and he knew that sounds were escaping him but he had no idea what they might be. For a split second the confusion of it all became too much and, as he watched his own hands tangling in the Doctor's hair, he thought he could see blood on his fingers.

"Just relax," the Doctor panted in his ear. "Just think about me, okay? Think about this." The Doctor thrust into him a little harder as he said it and suddenly the blood was gone.

He saw constellations and walls of flame and heard the roar of thunder and the wailing of the TARDIS in flight. Slowly the rushes of images and sounds began to blur together, until there was nothing but fog and white noise behind the image of the man above him and the sounds escaping the Doctor's lips. If he looked too deeply into the Doctor's eyes he saw himself instead, and felt himself writhing against him.

The Doctor thrust harder again and he was shot back into his own body. "Yes," he heard himself whisper, trying to push himself into the Doctor's movement. "Keep doing that." The Doctor rewarded him by repeating his movements with more force, grunting as he drove himself deeper.

Someone wanted to be touched, but it was impossible to tell who, so the Master reached for the Doctor's shevra, and the Doctor reached down between the Master's legs. The moment he felt the Doctor's hand wrap around him and begin moving he cried out and his muscles tensed again.

The white noise, the fog, the feel of the Doctor's body—everything seemed to condense together into something that was simply too much to bear. For the briefest moment, there was nothing. He was blind in a world of the purest silence. Then it was burst apart with near violent force.

It felt almost like regenerating, except it was more like coming to life than dying.

The Doctor was moaning in his ear and trembling between his knees, and something warm washed over his stomach before his own body finally relaxed again. There were a few minutes where it seemed like neither of them could speak—their minds were far too busy separating from each other to operate something as complex as speech.

Instead the Doctor touched his face, and he smiled in return. He watched as the Doctor's pupils slowly shrank back to their normal size and he felt his body carefully becoming aware of itself again. Finally, the Doctor pecked a kiss on his cheek and climbed off of him, returning a moment later with a towel.

"Did you just find this on the floor?" he asked, his voice seeming a little odd and alien to him with the first few words.

"Yeah," the Doctor answered, climbing back into the bed beside him. "It's okay. That one's from today and I only used it on my hair."

"How do you know?"

"Because I just do."

He shook his head but used the towel to clean himself off anyway. "Your room is disgusting."

"You're the one who wanted to see it," the Doctor mumbled. "Move your arm."

He lifted his arm and let the Doctor settle against him, resting his head on the Master's chest. For a moment it seemed impossible that he was even there. After all this time, after all the terrible things he'd done, he had somehow found himself in the Doctor's bed, a place that very few could ever claim to have been.

"Should I go back to my room?"

The Doctor tangled their feet together and clung to him almost protectively. "Don't you dare."


	34. Donna

Things seemed a bit clearer in the morning. Donna didn't feel confused about where she was when she woke up and, though she had some images in her head that were certainly not her own, she could easily tell what thoughts belonged to her.

She was on another planet, in the TARDIS, with the Doctor. It was strange to be travelling with the Doctor in a group when it had only ever been the two of them, but she was glad for it. On their last day together, before she lost her memory, she had seen how thrilled the Doctor was to have so many friends around him. She'd always known he was a lonely man, very sad beneath all those smiles, but she could never have guessed how deeply it ran until she had been given a glimpse into the true core of him. The Doctor needed to have people around him.

Grandad was already in the kitchen making breakfast. "Morning," she said, kissing him on the cheek. "Where is everyone?"

"Still in bed, I expect. Tea?"

"I'll make it, thanks. So, the Doctor does actually sleep then?"

" 'Course he does," Grandad answered with a bit of a laugh. "Why do you think he's got a room?"

"I don't know, I just never really saw him sleep, that's all." She shrugged her shoulders and set to making the tea. "I mean, I saw him sleep once. He had some of this fancy toffee stuff at this one place we went to and it turned out there was something in it that his species isn't supposed to eat, so he was a bit off for a couple of days. But the rest of the time he'd be working on something when I went to bed, and working on something when I got up, suit and all."

"He only needs a few hours, that's all. You don't want to know what he's like when he's tired though, trust me," he said with a shake of his head. "When he first brought me here, he was so exhausted that he was a right piece of work, I'll tell you that much."

He must have been awake by now, she decided. He probably just got distracted with some gadget or another or, more likely, he was distracted by Harry. It was surprising to see, but the look in his eyes when Harry asked him to dance was unmistakable. They stood too close together, Harry had a tendency to get close and whisper in the Doctor's ear rather than to simply speak quietly, and she'd noticed that they held hands in the crowd.

If there wasn't something going on between them, they both wanted there to be.

She made a cup of tea for herself and decided she may as well make one for the Doctor too. "I'll go get him. Don't want him starting work on something when you're making breakfast."

"Tell Harry too, if you see him."

She checked Harry's room first and found it empty with the bed already made. It made her a little uncomfortable knowing that he was on the ship without knowing where, but she tried to shake the feeling off. A fear of the man had been seared into her brain along with other pieces of the Doctor but, apparently, that fear was no longer needed.

When she knocked on the Doctor's door he took so long to answer that she nearly walked away, thinking he wasn't in. But she heard some bumps and crashes as he apparently stumbled his way to the door until it finally cracked open.

"Donna, hi! Did you need something?"

He opened the door just barely enough for her to see his face, careful to keep his body behind it where she couldn't see it. "Grandad's making breakfast," she said slowly, taking in whatever details were available from what she could see. He seemed a little out of breath, though perhaps he had run to answer the door, and she noticed that the small visible bit of his shoulder was bare. "What's wrong with your eyes?"

"My eyes?" he repeated, blinking several times as if that would somehow answer it.

"They're all sort of big."

"Oh.  _Oh_! They just do that first thing in the morning, adjusting to the light and all that. Perfectly normal."

"Are you sure?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "The only time I've seen someone's eye get that big was when Shirley Norton's mum had that seizure. Can Time Lords have seizures?"

"I'm not having a seizure, Donna."

"What about a concussion? Concussions can do that, right? Have you smacked your head on anything?"

"Look, just tell Wilf I'll be there in five—ten! No," he smiled in the strange way he did when he was embarrassed and cleared his throat. "Fifteen minutes. Just need to shower."

The door closed quickly and was followed by a sudden bang from the other side. She thought about what she had seen since yesterday—the body language, the stolen glances, the invitation to dance that had clearly not been directed at her. Now she wondered if Harry's bed was already made or if it simply hadn't been slept in yet.

She still had his tea in her hand, forgotten. She considered using it as an excuse to go back and knock on the door again and try to get him to tell her exactly what was going on, but quickly thought better of it. If it turned out that he was actually alone in there, she'd look mad and, if he wasn't alone, all she would succeed in doing would be to embarrass him. Besides, she had a feeling that Harry was the type of man who would not be worried about what she saw if she knew he was in there.

When she stepped back out into the main hallway, she was met by Boris. He was just standing there, facing the door, with that eerie featureless face of his. She'd always tried to be polite to Boris but the thing gave her the creeps, especially after her trip to the Library. The way he blurred when he moved, simply vanished if he was touched, and especially when he tried to mimic facial expressions .

"What?" she asked stiffly. "What are you looking at?"

The darkness carved itself into a smile and she felt a shiver run down her spine. She knew that Boris couldn't talk to her, so there was no point in continuing to ask him questions. She was going to just make a dash for it and leave the shadow on his own when he raised a black hand and pointed at the tea she was holding.

"What? It's just tea. Have it then, I don't—"

Boris cut her off by putting his finger to where his lips would be, asking for her silence. She stopped talking, more out of surprise than obedience, and watched as he moved his hand away and pointed down the hall in the opposite direction of the kitchen. She looked but saw nothing there, and when she opened her mouth to ask what he was on about, Boris quickly returned his finger to his lips and shushed her again.

"There's nothing there," she whispered quietly.

Boris pointed down the hall again, then curled his finger and pointed to the left.

"Around the corner?"

Boris nodded his head, that bizarre smile still etched upon his shifting face and, then, he suddenly collapsed into dust. She could just make out wisps of black shadow flowing through the air. He obviously wanted her to follow him down there, but should she? As creepy as she found him, Boris was one of their own, and the Doctor trusted him.

She hurried down the hall as fast as she could without making too much noise and without spilling the tea. She wasn't sure which corner she was supposed to turn, hoping that Boris would let her know when she got to it. Boris didn't need to tell her.

When she reached the third intersection and glanced down it as she passed, she knew what she was meant to find. He was just standing there, blue suit and all, working away on one of the mini-consoles in the wall.

"Doctor?"

He didn't flinch or stammer. He didn't even look her way. But the moment she spoke she saw him tense up, ever so slightly.

"Morning, Donna," he said casually, continuing to work on the console. "I thought you'd be in the kitchen."

"Yeah, I was just headed there," she stammered. "It's just . . . I forgot to give you your tea."

"Thank you, that was thoughtful," he gave her a quick smile and reached for the cup. It was then that she noticed he was being careful not to look at her head on, not letting her see the right side of his face properly. It was impossible for him to have gotten dressed and made it to this part of the ship so fast, that much was certain, but that didn't mean it was impossible for him to be there.

"Are you erasing the memory in the cameras?" she asked, looking more carefully now and noticing that he had a small smear of blood on his neck and that there was a small stockpile of gadgets set on the floor by his feet.

"Why would I do that?"

"Your hair is too long."

He stopped his work, frozen with a strange smirk on his face. "You weren't supposed to see me," he answered quietly. "I've been working off my memory, see. I remember this day. You and Wilf are meant to be in the kitchen, and then Harry and I join you. We all have breakfast together, and Jack finally makes his way back in about an hour's time."

"But you're still in your room," she answered, putting it together in her head. "You just assumed I went back to the kitchen because I'll be there when you come out. You didn't know that I came down here first. Right?"

He took a moment to think about it before nodding his head. "Right. This must be how you knew we were here."

"Do I tell you?"

"Yes," he looked at her properly know, and she could see the cut on the right side of his forehead that he had been trying to hide. "Jack has set up surveillance all over the ship but it doesn't work. When you hear us talking about it, you'll tell me that there's no point trying to find anything that way. You tell me that we're still on the ship, but you won't tell me how you know. I suspected that it might be something like this."

"So, this happened before?"

"Yeah."

"Can I ask you a question?"

He smirked again, apparently amused. "Sure."

"Just now, when I was at your room, were you—?"

"Yeah," he answered with an awkward cough, and quickly looking in another direction. ". . . That thing about my eyes was a lie too. If you ever see my eyes like that, it's probably best to give me some privacy."

"Now why wouldn't you just tell me that instead of letting me stand there like an idiot asking questions?"

"Oh, come on, Donna!" he chuckled.

"Yeah, you're right," her eyes travelled down to the pile of gadgets at his feet and quickly realized that the few she recognized were for medicinal purposes. "Are you planning on performing surgery?"

His smile quickly vanished, replaced with a grim look. "I was waiting for everyone to be clear of the bedrooms so I could get in there. I need blankets and towels, and the table in the hallway has a spare cell replicator sitting on it. If I take the one from my lab, I'll notice that it's gone missing."

"Got it."

"It should work out if I just have enough supplies."

"It's Harry, right?" she asked, worried by the shadow that had passed over his eyes. "Is he okay?"

"He says it's too cold . . . He's never cold." He smiled as if he thought it was funny, but his voice quivered slightly. "He never stops complaining about the heat. Every bloody place we go, it's always too hot for him and he never shuts up about it. Now he's asking me why it's so cold."

"But the surgery will help him, right? You're a doctor, the  _best_  doctor. You know everything. You can just perform the surgery and he'll be fine. It'll all be fine."

But the Doctor shook his head. "He's weak. He's lost so much blood, and it's a lot more complicated than that. If I could just give him some time to rest then it wouldn't be a big deal but . . ." He stopped to take a breath and she could see the stress in his eyes, the heavy weight on his shoulders. "It can't wait. It has to be today."

"I could help," she answered urgently. "I mean, I don't know much about surgery or Time Lord bodies, but I've seen on those doctor shows when they need people just to sort of hold things while they work. I can help if you tell me what to do."

"We shouldn't even be talking. It's too dangerous to play with our timelines like this—"

"It's too dangerous to do it alone!" she interrupted. "I know that look in your eye, Doctor. I've seen it! That's the look you get when something is so big that even you can't fix it. You said that you remember this day . . . what happens after I tell you that you're still on the TARDIS? Where am I for the rest of the day?"

He took a moment to think about it, and a look of hope filled his eyes. "You get a headache—a hangover, you said. We take Wilf back to the park, but you stay behind to rest. We're gone for hours."

"I don't _feel_ hung over."

"No," he said with a grin beginning to spread across his face. "That's because you're a liar, Donna Noble."

"I'll get the blankets. Wait here."

The clock was ticking. The Doctor said she was in the kitchen by the time he got there so she had to move fast. She ran to one of the empty bedrooms and grabbed an armful of blankets from the linen closet, then to the bathroom for towels. When she came back out into the hallway, she could hear Harry's laughing faintly drifting through the Doctor's bedroom door, so she snatched the replicator off the table and ran again.

The Doctor had managed to regain the spring in his step while she was gone, smiling as if there wasn't a thing in the universe that could bother him. He had something new in his hands, holding it like a prize.

"What's that for?" she asked the moment she saw it. "That's not for medicine."

"No, this is to fix the teleporter we came here in," the Doctor answered, gathering up the other items off the floor. "Harry smashed it as soon as we got here. He doesn't want me going back without him."

"Why would you go back? You're safe here, aren't you?"

"We left someone behind," he muttered quickly. "Listen, you need to get going or you won't make it to the kitchen in time."

"Fine. I'll meet you back here, ten minutes after everyone leaves," she said, quickly shoving the blankets into his arms and turning to leave.

"Donna, wait!"

"Quickly then!" she answered nervously.

"Does Ganbri sound like a name that would belong to a man or a woman?"

"Are you daft? I've got to go!"

"I know, I know!" he answered quickly. "But it's important. I need to figure something out. If you heard about someone called Ganbri, would you think it was a man or a woman?"

"I don't know. Does it mean anything?" She was looking down the hallway now, making sure that the door to the bedrooms wasn't opening.

"Star."

"Star is a woman's name."

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "I know that, but it's not Star, it's Ganbri. Does  _Ganbri_  sound feminine or masculine?"

"Ohh, masculine I suppose. Yeah, I would say a man."

"A man?"

" _Yes_! God, you  _never_  stop talking, do you?"

If she hadn't run, she would have passed the Doctor in the hallway. She stopped for just a moment outside the kitchen to fix her hair and make sure it didn't look like she'd been running before opening the red door.

"The Doctor's on his way," she said as calmly as possible and made her way to the toaster so that it would look like she'd been helping in the kitchen all this time.

"What about Harry?"

"I didn't see him."

Seconds later the Doctor came through the door. His hair was still wet and his tie was hanging loose around his neck, but no one would ever have guessed it was because he had been rushing.

"Doctor, have you seen Harry?" Grandad asked the moment he realized the Doctor was alone. "No one's seen him yet and I'm a little worried."

"I'm sure he's fine," she answered quickly.

"It's just, we did put him through an awful lot last night and he's still sick," he continued, wringing his old hands together with fret. "I just know that night time and the mornings seem to be when he has the most trouble."

"He's fine, Wilf," the Doctor responded kindly as he set to knotting his tie. "I just saw him a minute ago. He said he was going in the shower."

"Well, I think we should be easy on him for a little while," Grandad said, turning back to the stove and beginning to dish out pancakes. "It was an awful lot of excitement for him yesterday, and then all that running around we did—you know how the heat tires him out."

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "It wasn't that hot, Wilfred, he's fine."

" _You_ didn't think it was hot, but you go everywhere in that big coat of yours—stars and goodness knows what other kind of blazing places, of course you're used to it."

She sat, grinning to herself as they argued. Grandad insisted that Harry was still in a fragile state, and the Doctor insisted that he simply liked to moan about things for attention. Eventually Harry did show up, wearing nothing but a towel around his waist until he finally gave in to the Doctor's demands that he at least wear a robe.

They settled down for breakfast together and she smiled and joked with the rest of them. She made sure to make comments about having too much to drink and feeling a bit off so that when the time came no one would question her when she chose to stay in. But, as the minutes slowly ticked by, she felt the fear in her rising in anticipation of what was to come.


	35. The Master

Games were something the Doctor had always loved, even if he didn't always know it. The Master remembered being six years old and wandering through his father's fields, to the silver woods at the edge of the tall grass. He loved those woods—a place to hide from the duties of a child of Gallifrey. It was the place he went to be alone or, at least, it was until he found the strangest creature he'd ever laid eyes on.

Near the clearing, he found a boy up in one of the trees with silver leaves shining in his hair, painful looking scratches all over his arms and legs from climbing, and the filthiest feet he'd ever seen. He spoke in riddles and half-truths, grinning in delight as he evaded giving out any actual facts.

"Where are you from?" he remembered asking when the boy had refused to give his name.

And that mad little boy grinned wide and turned those hazel eyes upward. "The sky."

He looked up at the sky as well, seeing nothing but orange and the top of mountain peeking over the ring of trees—the boy had come down from that mountain. When the boy asked him the same question in turn he decided it would be best to answer in the same fashion.

"The soil."

The boy's eyes immediately turned toward the direction of his father's fields, knowing without question what he meant.

"Do you know what that means then?" the boy asked next, hurriedly climbing down from his tree. "We've changed this place now."

"What do you mean?"

He carefully dropped from one of the low branches, his bare feet landing lightly on the ground. "These aren't just woods anymore. This is the place where the Land and Sky met," the boy explained, thrusting out his hand for a handshake. "This is the Horizon."

Horizon became the code word they used for the clearing in the woods and later for any secret meeting places they had. The Doctor had so loved having another child who was clever enough to understand him and took full advantage of having a friend who knew how to play his games. He had grown up with those puzzles and tricks and mastered the Doctor's games, so he had no idea why the Doctor thought he could fool him now.

But he went along with the game, smiling and pretending he knew nothing about what was happening in the ship. He spent the night beside the Doctor and spent the morning inside him, despite the Doctor's protests that someone would come looking for them soon enough. The fight had been feeble and so they both knew that it was just another game; a simple handful of hair and a little wrestling had been all that it took to pin the Doctor beneath him.

When Donna came to the door, he knew that the Doctor only answered it because a part of him thought it was thrilling. So he crept across the room as the Doctor spoke to her and, the moment the door was closed, shoved his chest against the wall to finish where they'd left off.

He had heard a whispered voice in his head since last night, like a quiet prayer for help, and thought it might have been his mind playing tricks on him. But as he pushed the Doctor against the wall, holding his arms behind his back so that he could pretend to struggle, he heard it clearly now.

He heard Boris leading Donna away, heard Donna wondering if she should follow him or run, and finally he heard the Doctor. It was very quiet and the words were hard to make out because it was so far away, but he could tell enough to know that it wasn't the Doctor who was with him now.

The Doctor must have taken the fastest shower in his life, rushing in an attempt to avoid suspicion about what he had really been doing. The Master could hear Donna's mind racing as she hurried about in the other bedrooms, so he thought it would be best to stall the Doctor as much as he could.

He stood near the door, so that he could block it if he needed to, listening carefully for a sign that Donna had gotten away. He teased the Doctor for feeling uncomfortable walking around naked even after all the things they'd just done and tried to wrestle his modesty towel off him. The Doctor only bothered to fight him for it for about a minute before simply releasing the towel with an exaggerated huff and hurrying to get dressed instead.

The Master had suspected, as he was sure the Doctor had, that there might be a future version of the Doctor on board ever since Wilfred's strange behaviour at his house. If the Doctor was blatantly taking medical equipment from a past version of himself then he must not have had access to his own TARDIS, so why not hide in a past one?

He would let the Doctor slink around with Jack and keep his secrets as he tried to work it out, but it wouldn't do them any good. Any proof the Doctor might find would be known by his future self, who would take steps to correct it. There was no point in trying to catch him, and nothing to be gained from doing so.

But the Doctor loved his games, and the Master played along. He didn't know anything about it, as far as the Doctor was concerned. All the Master had on his mind was romance, sex, and the next great adventure.

It wasn't too far from the truth either. The Doctor may have been overly concerned with the future, but the Master was not. Alone, the of them had each been incredible but together they would be invincible. Whatever challenges the future Doctor was facing, he knew that his own future self would keep him safe.

He decided to get a laugh out of Wilfred after breakfast by digging through the Doctor's wardrobe and finding his long lost fedora. He traded his grey suit for a brown one of the same style, matching nicely with that most ancient of hats. Wilfred laughed at the sight of it, but then quickly corrected himself and assured the Master that it looked wonderful.

"That hat belongs in the garbage, not on anyone's head," the Doctor said with a shake of his head. "I haven't even touched that thing in nearly two hundred years."

"Did you really used to wear it?" Wilfred asked, seemingly amazed.

The Doctor nodded and made a bit of a face. "It went better with my hair then."

The Master waited until the Doctor looked away to gesture with his hands and mouth ' _big hair_ ' to Wilfred, earning a chuckle from the old man.

When Jack returned and vanished with the Doctor again, The Master waited patiently with Wilfred and Donna and told them stories of his and the Doctor's past lives. It was only a few minutes before Donna excused herself and hurried from the room.

Wilf stared after her, eyebrows knitted together. "Is it just me, or does it seem like something is going on?"

"Something is going on," he confirmed. "Do you want to know?"

"If you can tell me."

"You have to keep it between us."

"Alright."

He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one had come in the room behind him before speaking. "When you saw the Doctor in your house was he alone or was I with him?"

Wilfred took a long moment to think before answering, eying the Master carefully. "You were with him."

"Then we're both on the ship," he said quietly. "After we left the house, we came to the TARDIS and got inside before anyone came back. We're still here, somewhere. The Doctor suspects it too, so he's trying to find proof."

"But you say that like you already have your own proof."

He simply tapped his own head and Wilf nodded in understanding.

"Do you know where they're hiding?"

"I think so," he looked at Wilf, wondering what he was plotting in his head, and smirked. "I won't tell you though. My secret."

"Go say hello. Before the others come back, go on."

"No, I shouldn't. It's too dangerous," he answered, watching the old man carefully now. "Besides, if the Doctor wanted to talk to me, he would come to me. Or at least  _I_  would, if my past self needed to know something, I would go back and tell him."

Wilf continued to stare at him, his eyes heavy with worry. He felt a stone slipping down into his stomach as those blue eyes bore into him. Wilfred had seen them—had seen the state they were in—and the look in those eyes was not comforting.

"I think that the Doctor would like very much to speak to you," Wilf said quietly, looking down at his hands. "He doesn't always ask for what he needs."

Those eyes were too knowing to ignore their advice. He swallowed hard and got up from his seat, getting a slow nod of approval from Wilf when he glanced towards the door that led to the main hallway.

"Thank you, Grandfather," he said quietly.

His mind searched the ship as he hurried along, finding the Doctor, Jack, and Donna so that he could make sure they didn't start coming his way. He wasn't sure if his idea had been correct but he knew exactly where he would go if he wanted to hide in the TARDIS.

How they got inside was a mystery he'd have to solve when he came back to it one day. For now, it didn't matter. He came to a stop at the infamous steel door that they had never been able to open and stared at it, unsure of what to do. His first thought was to open it but he quickly decided against it, certain that he shouldn't see what was on the other side.

"Hello?" he said loudly, tapping his knuckle on the door. "Doctor?"

He wasn't sure what he should do. He wasn't even sure if this was where they would be hiding, and if they were, could they even hear anything through the door? Would the Doctor even answer him?

"I don't want to ask you questions," he continued, trying to project his words telepathically as well. "I don't want to know anything about the future. You don't even have to talk to me if you don't want to. I'm just here . . . hello?"

A long moment passed where nothing happened. Maybe he had been wrong, and the Doctor wasn't hiding in there after all. Maybe it had been stupid to even try. He should really go back to Wilf and wait for the others.

"I'm in here."

His hearts stopped for a moment. The voice had drifted through the door in barely a whisper but he was sure that he had heard it. He froze, just listening to be sure that he hadn't imagined it and, when he heard a scrape of movement, he put his hand against the steel door.

"Are you alone?" the Doctor asked.

"I'm alone," he answered quickly. "Are you okay?"

"I thought you weren't going to ask about the future?"

"I wasn't asking if you're injured."

Suddenly the air filled with a clatter of noise as several deadbolts and locks on the other side of the door were hastily undone. The Master stepped back and thought about running. He shouldn't see the inside of the room or the Doctor. The Doctor couldn't have been thinking right to decide to open the door. He was prepared to take off but the door cracked open and there wasn't a chance in hell that he could leave the Doctor looking like that.

He looked stressed and exhausted, with his hair too long and a nasty gash across his forehead. But it was his face that made the Master stop. The look in those eyes was the same desperate look he had seen the last time he died.

"I can't do this," the Doctor whispered shakily.

The Master’s mind shut down and his body acted on its own, working out of instinct. The only thing he could do with the Doctor looking at him like that was to rush forward and hug him. He felt the Doctor's hands grabbing at the back of his shirt and holding on tightly. He felt the emotion rolling off the other Time Lord in tumultuous waves, filling him with fear and grief.

His eyes wandered up to the door, at the sliver of light that was escaping the opening. If his future self was inside that room as well, why was the Doctor clinging to him so tightly?

"You listen to me!" the Doctor snarled suddenly, pulling away and glaring at him with angry and tear-filled eyes. "I don't care what he said to you, you leave him! We'll go back for him. We'll go back together, but we  _have_  to run first!"

"Doctor, I don't know what you're talking about," he muttered quietly, grabbing hold of the Doctor's arms and pulling him back into the embrace. "You can't tell me these things. I'm sorry, but you just can't."

"I promise, we'll go back," the Doctor pleaded. "Just remember when the time comes and keep running."

"Okay, I will," he answered quickly, trying to soothe the Doctor so that he wouldn't keep talking. "I'll run."

He stood there for a moment, just holding the Doctor tight and trying to let calm thoughts seep into him. He couldn't help, not really. He couldn't go into that room and see himself, so the most he could do was just try to help the Doctor. The poor man was completely terrified, and he got stupid when he was emotional.

He tried to sweep it all away, as much as he could without actually entering the Doctor's mind—he couldn't risk seeing the future in there. After a couple of minutes, the Doctor's grip on him had loosened and his breathing had almost gone back to normal.

A quiet cough drifted from the open door and an intense wave of relief immediately washed through him. He shouldn't know anything about his future self, but he couldn't deny feeling infinitely better about this situation now that he knew he was still alive.

The sound seemed to bring the Doctor back to himself and he slowly released the Master. Those brown eyes looked into his, still glossy with tears but at least lacking the fearful desperation they held before.

"You and that stupid hat," the Doctor said with the briefest flash of a smile. "I don't know why you wear that thing."

"It looks better on me than it ever did on you," he answered cheekily, trying to get some glimpse at happiness in the other man.

"You're right, it does," the Doctor nodded. "I should go."

"Yeah," he agreed. "Me too."

The Doctor leaned forward and planted a gentle kiss upon his lips. "I love you, Harry."

The stood, frozen in place, as the Doctor walked away from him. The Doctor turned back to offer him a weak smile before he went back through the steel door and closed it behind him. As the locks slid back into place he told himself that he had to remember this day, always. Whenever he found himself inside that room, coughing weakly with an absent Doctor and possibly dying, he would remember that it was okay.

Because this would always be the day that he first heard the Doctor say he loved him.


	36. Wilfred

"Would you take that hat off?"

"No."

"It's  _my_  hat."

"You said yourself that you haven't worn it in two hundred years. I think that counts as abandonment, don't you?"

"Not if I left it in my own home."

"Ah, but it's  _not_  your home. You stole it."

" _Borrowed_."

"Seven hundred years ago! When exactly are you planning on returning it?"

"Maybe I would if the museum were still there."

"Well, I'm  _borrowing_  your hat," Harry said with finality, crossing his arms. "It was blooming bad enough out here last night, and now you've got me walking around in this stifling heat in the  _sunlight_. I'll die, Doctor. I will just drop dead from heat exhaustion and it'll be your fault."

"Then we'll get you your own hat."

"No need," Harry answered with a grin. "I have one."

They had been arguing with each other nonstop since they left the TARDIS, but at least they were in good spirits. Wilf used to worry about how much they fought but they strangely seemed to experience some kind of glee when they argued.

Jack had muttered in his ear and told him they were flirting, but he wasn't really sure. He had suspected that Harry might have some romantic feelings for the Doctor, but he highly doubted that the Doctor returned them. It wasn't so long ago that the two could barely speak to each other, after all.

But maybe Jack was right. He didn't know much about Time Lord culture, so it was difficult to know where their people drew the line between platonic and flirtatious behaviour but ,if they were human, he would think it was the latter.

They had been sort of drifting together since last night. If the Doctor stopped to look at something then Harry would stop as well, even if he seemed to have no interest in what the Doctor was looking at, and vice versa. He'd seen them holding hands again as well—did it imply the same thing on Gallifrey as it did on Earth?

"Perhaps we should take a little rest from the sun, Doctor," he spoke up. "It is pretty toasty today."

Wilfred actually didn't think it was all that hot, but someone who looked old asking for a rest usually got better sympathy than someone who looked young. He was worried about taking Harry out enough as it was, not wanting to overbear him with activity and cause an attack and, now that they were out in the sun, he worried more. He could see that Harry was tired, even if the Doctor didn't see it, and he knew that the poor lad would start feeling ill if they didn't give him a rest soon.

"Yeah, let's give the kids a break," Jack agreed, squinting up at the relentless sun. "I know there's a clearing over that way where they have street performers a lot of the time. We could grab a drink, find a spot in the shade, and see if we can catch a show."

Harry made an exaggerated gasp of excitement. "Maybe we'll see your acrobats!"

Jack mimicked the gasp perfectly and returned the look of mock excitement. "Maybe they can teach you some of their tricks!"

It didn't take long to find the place Jack was talking about, and he was right about the street performers. They were still setting up a lot of complicated equipment, but Wilf decided that was a good thing because it meant they would wind up waiting for the show to begin and stay longer. The area had several long benches set around the perimeter of the clearing specifically for the viewing of such shows, and Harry made a bee line for the closest one in the shade.

"You guys get comfortable," Jack offered kindly. "I'll go get some drinks."

Wilfred stole a glance at Harry and saw that his face was completely different when he didn't think anyone was looking at him. He had learned by now that Harry wasn't really taken seriously when he complained because he usually did it in a teasing or joking manner, but that didn't mean his complaints weren't real. The poor boy looked quite unwell.

"Have a lie down, Harry," he suggested, noting the way Harry immediately brought a smile to his face again once he was aware of someone watching him. "Kick your shoes off too. It'll help you cool down."

For once, Harry obeyed without so much as a smart comment. The bench was narrow and made of hard stone, but he looked much happier being able to lie down. That seemed to help the Doctor realize that Harry was not complaining for the sake of being annoying for he quickly took off his suit jacket, rolled it up, and offered it as pillow.

"Thank you, Doctor," Harry muttered, stuffing the jacket under his head while being very careful to keep hold of the old hat in his free hand. "But I'm still not giving back the hat."

"Keep the stupid hat. Excuse me, Wilf," the Doctor stepped past him so that he could sit by Harry's feet. Wilf decided to sit by Harry's head where he could keep an eye on him while the Doctor lifted Harry's feet onto his lap and started undoing the laces on his shoes.

"Don't take my shoes off," Harry groaned but made no attempt to pull his feet away and the Doctor pulled them off anyway. He simply sat there, one hand resting on Harry's leg and the other holding one of his feet, and watched silently as the performers set up.

Jack returned a minute later with drinks for everyone. "I asked them to flavour yours with a little arsenic and just a  _pinch_  of cyanide," he said cheerfully as he pushed a cup into Harry's hand. "Should give it a bit of a kick."

"Mm, my favourite," Harry didn't even sit up to drink, just popped the straw in his mouth and drank it lying down.

"What did you put in mine?" the Doctor asked when Jack gave him his drink.

"Don't worry, you won't mind once you drink it."

It was another fifteen minutes of watching the performers set up and listening to Jack telling them stories about his days as a travelling performer before the show started. It turned out to be a magic show, starting with a few simple disappearance tricks and gaining momentum until the performers made it temporarily rain over one single person and made one of their own members appear to change species.

So many of the things Wilfred saw seemed absolutely impossible, though he didn't say much because he was sure that the others in the group were clever enough to know how the tricks were done. Whenever he peeked down at Harry's face he could see a content smile and he was glad to see that the Doctor was smiling too, though he couldn't imagine having Harry's feet right beneath his nose was pleasant on a hot day.

They spent the next couple of hours drifting from one show to another, letting the hottest part of the day pass with as little physical activity as they could manage. Once it began to cool a little Harry seemed to get his energy back and they returned to all the exciting activities of the park, dragging Jack around to all the things he had missed the night before. But when Wilf mentioned that they had all danced together, Harry threatened to break Jack's fingers before the poor man was even able to say anything. The Doctor quickly decided that they'd all done enough dancing the night before.

The day slipped by happily. Even with Harry and Jack bickering every ten minutes, everyone seemed to be in a good mood. He only wished that Donna had been feeling better and joined them—with her along it could have been named the perfect day.

The sun went down and the world was alive with lights again. He thought that Harry would be comfortable once it got dark, but he began to complain about the heat again. The sun may have disappeared but the countless number of lights beaming down on them every moment did produce an awful lot of heat, and Wilf had to admit himself that it was quite warm.

However, it wasn't until Harry got physically ill that anyone really took the complaints seriously. They had gone on one of those mad rides that spin and fly and do all sorts of impossible things. It was normal to feel a bit off once it was over, considering that everything in your stomach had been flipped upside down several times, but Harry finally couldn't take anymore and looked perfectly white in the face.

"What's the matter?" Jack had teased while Harry stayed unnaturally quiet. "Can't take it rough?"

"Jack, don't," the Doctor said quietly and touched Harry on the shoulder. "Are you alright?"

Wilf just shook his head and took the poor lad by his arm, leading him over to the nearest garbage can. As they neared it, Harry suddenly quickened his steps and reached the bin just in time. Jack hurried off to get some water while Wilf stood with Harry and patted his back. The Doctor stayed quiet, though he looked terribly concerned, and fidgeted the whole time.

"We should take him home," Wilf insisted. "He's done too much since yesterday without enough rest. We should have both known that when he slept in this morning—he obviously needed it."

The Doctor nodded in agreement quickly. "You're right."

After a couple of minutes Harry seemed to think that he would be alright and dared to venture away from the garbage can. Jack pushed the cup of water into his hands and they all sat and waited while he sipped at it and caught his breath.

The walk back was stressful because they didn't want to rush Harry and overexert him again, but they also wanted to get him back as soon as possible. Wilf noticed that Harry's fingers were beginning to twitch and that his eyes were gaining a confused and faraway look. He thought he would keep that quiet, not wanting to worry the Doctor any more than he already was, but it wasn't long before Harry's behaviour slipped.

Harry stopped quite suddenly and looked around him, staring into the crowd with knitted eyebrows. "Where's Kahlia?"

Wilfred felt immediate sadness. He looked into those worried brown eyes and remembered the day that he and Sylvia couldn't find Donna and how awful that had felt. This would be so much worse.

"She's not here," the Doctor said quietly, taking Harry's hand and trying to keep him moving. "Come along."

"No, no," Harry insisted, pulling his hand free and scanning the crowd again. "She was right here. Where's she gone?"

"Who's Kahlia?" Jack piped up.

The Doctor simply waved his hand in annoyance to shut Jack up and tried to get Harry's attention again. "We left her in the TARDIS, remember? We're going back right now to go see her."

"The TARDIS?"

"Yes. It's this way."

But Harry simply looked at them all with even deeper confusion. "She's never been in the TARDIS."

"Not until today," the Doctor persisted.

"What is wrong with him?" Jack was asking Wilf now, muttering under his breath while the Doctor kept talking. "And who's Kahlia?"

"This is just what happens sometimes when he's not well," Wilf explained. "His memories get all mixed up and he gets confused."

"She was right here!" Harry suddenly shouted. "She must have wandered off. We need to look for her."

"Harry, listen to me," Wilf stepped forward and grabbed Harry's shoulder, making sure to look him in the eye. "Listen to me, my boy. Remember where we are. Remember  _when_  we are. It's just you, me, the Doctor, and Jack and we're walking back to the TARDIS. We'll get you a lovely dinner and you can have a nice long sleep and everything will make sense in the morning."

He was happy to see that Harry seemed to calm down a bit when he spoke to him, though he was still distressed. "But if she's not with us then where is she?"

"She's gone, lad," he answered in as kind a voice as he could muster, squeezing Harry's shoulders in comfort. "Let's get back to the ship and we'll talk about it, alright?"

"She's gone . . ." Harry swallowed hard and looked carefully at each person in the group in turn, analyzing them carefully. "She never saw the TARDIS. She never met any of you."

"That's right," the Doctor answered. "Just take a second to think about it. You can figure it out."

Harry nodded his head quickly. "It's just . . . she was right here."

"But that was a long time ago."

"A long time ago," Harry repeated, the look of confusion in his eyes slowly being replaced with sadness. "And . . . she's dead now, isn't she?"

"Yes. I'm sorry."

"Oh," Harry glanced around at the crowds of children surrounding him and nodded his head again. "Does her mother know?"

"Yeah," the Doctor slipped his arm around Harry's shoulders and began to lead him in the direction of the TARDIS again. "It's been a long time. She knows."

"Okay," Harry walked along, taking in deep breaths and looking around him carefully. "Which parts are real?"

"We're real," Wilf answered him quickly, leaning forward as he spoke to make sure that Harry could see him. "There's me, the Doctor, and Jack. The people around us and all the lights are real. It's safe here, don't worry."

Several minutes passed in silence. Harry walked along peacefully, looking about him with a frown on his face, trying to sort reality from memory.

Wilf knew this was going to happen. He had said so many times before they even left the ship and several times afterwards. Harry had been doing very well lately—someone who didn't know him would never guess that anything was wrong with him—but that didn't mean he was better. Harry was still sick and everyone knew it, but they had still taken his healthy behaviour for granted. The trip last night had been pushing it as it was but taking Harry out again the next day had been stupid.

They were almost at the ship when Harry suddenly pulled away from the Doctor, eyes wide as he turned to the crowds. "Kahlia!"

"God damn it," Jack muttered, grabbing a hold of Harry's arms to stop him from running off. "Who the hell is Kahlia?"

"My daughter," Harry spat back, trying to wrench his arms free. "She can't have gone far. Kahlia!"

Wilf stepped forward, catching Harry's eyes again and speaking slowly. "Harry, remember what's happening. You're sick and your memories get mixed up sometimes. Kahlia died a long time ago."

"She's not dead!" Harry insisted. "I can hear her. I can still hear her! We have to go back. Doctor!"

They were drawing the eyes of the crowd now, making the whole situation a lot more uncomfortable than it already was. Jack simply ignored the glares of strangers and kept his iron grip on Harry's arm, keeping him beside him.

"We have to get you back to the TARDIS," the Doctor said calmly. "I'm sorry, Master, but she's dead. We need to take care of _you_ right now."

"She's still in there," Harry's voice dropped to a whisper, staring intently into the Doctor's eyes. "Why won't you just go back? Doctor, please, we can get her out. She might still be able to regenerate."

If Wilf hadn't been looking directly at the Doctor at the time, he would have missed it. There was a split second in which every ounce of strength in the Doctor seemed to falter. His face changed to one of great sadness for just the briefest of moments before he forced himself back together.

"Jack, drag him, pick him up, I don't care what you have to do," the Doctor ordered, glancing at the many watchful eyes in the crowd. "We need to get him to the ship before this gets any worse and he becomes dangerous."

"Dangerous?" Wilf sputtered as Jack immediately began to haul Harry away, ordering the crowd to clear the way and claiming to be security. "Doctor, he's just worried about his little—"

"He's not talking about Kahlia anymore," the Doctor interrupted. "Trust me, if he delves any deeper into this memory, it could be  _very_  dangerous. I can't have him getting violent in a crowd like this. We need to get him on the ship where I can deal with him myself."

"But what on Earth happened?" he asked. "What memory is it?"

They reached the ship and the Doctor hurried forward to unlock the door. Harry kicked and fought as Jack dragged him through, growled threats escaping his mouth in a different language.

"It's a bad memory—the day we became enemies," the Doctor said with a pained expression as he locked the door shut behind them. "He's reliving the day that he first tried to kill me."

Wilf couldn't bear to think of what was going through poor Harry's head at this moment. "What happened?"

"Doctor!" Jack shouted, struggling to keep Harry under control. "Can we get a sedative or something? He's a bit stronger than he looks!"

The Doctor looked him in the eye, heavy with the weight of his memories. "I killed him first."


	37. The Doctor

The Master screamed at him just as angrily as he had six hundred years ago, demanding that he open the doors to the ship, that they go back. Wilf hurried off to get a sedative and Jack stood aside with his hand in his pocket, ready to pull out a gun any second.

The Doctor had intended to talk to the Master and try to bring him down. If he could risk touching him, he might have tried to slip inside his mind and calm him down that way. But it was hard to look into that face. Even though its shape had changed and its eyes were a different colour, it looked exactly the same.

" _He's slipping. I don't know what to do. Please."_

The Doctor remembered reading those words on his psychic paper and not needing to even think twice about who it might be from. It had been eighty years since he had married and the Master had left to follow his own path. They had seen each other very rarely since and each time the Master seemed more different—more feral. He was paranoid and angry and had been growing quite the temper. He had also heard some terrifying rumours about people going missing or hearing a voice in their heads that told them to do unspeakable things.

The drums had finally taken hold of him.

Qhoya had always been a loving woman and she put up with the Master far longer than anyone else would have. She was convinced that she could save her brother if she only had enough time. Finally, the day came when she called out to the Doctor, begging for help. How could he ignore it?

Some good old-fashioned travelling would be sure to help, just like the old days. The Master needed work and adventure to keep his mind from falling victim to itself, and that strategy had worked perfectly until they went their separate ways. Maybe it would work again?

"Master, you need to listen to me," he said slowly, putting his hands on the Master's face and looking into his eyes with urgency. "That was all so long ago. We are past all this now."

"What are you talking about? She's still out there!"

"No, she's not. She's not, I promise," he answered quickly. "We lived this already. Things are so different now."

Jack be damned, this was too important to worry about privacy now. He kept his hands firmly on the Master's face and pulled him into a kiss, trying desperately to pull his scattered mind back to the present. If he could just transfer a little narin he might be able to shift the Master's thoughts around and bring him down.

But the Master pulled away quickly and slapped him hard across the face. "What the hell do you think you're doing? We are not leaving her!"

Qhoya had left Gallifrey with them, hoping that they could work together to bring the Master back to himself. For a while they travelled peacefully, enjoying each other's company except for the occasional slip on the Master's part. It was so easy to make him angry and so difficult to calm him down. When he got upset he could be so cruel and, worse, he was beginning to get physically aggressive.

When they came across a city that was experiencing a virus outbreak, it seemed that the drive to achieve a particular goal helped the Master focus. They didn't fight for almost the entire mission and the Master had proved more help than hindrance for the first time in days. It looked hopeful that maybe he could be saved after all.

"Qhoya is dead," the Doctor said as calmly as he could. "I'm sorry. I am so sorry but I couldn't save her."

"I can still hear her! She's still alive!"

"What's he saying?" Jack sounded nervous, his hand slowly withdrawing his gun. "Doctor, what's happening?"

They found the source of the virus and managed to quarantine the infected with the kind of speed that he could only achieve when working in tandem with his old friend. They worked feverishly on a cure, but nothing was working and the patients were dying so fast that it wouldn't help anyone soon anyway. They had done all they could. All that was left was to help the infected until they passed and destroy the original specimen harbouring the virus.

At some point Qhoya had slipped away without them noticing. She had decided to deal with the virus source on her own and went to the quarantined lab. They didn't realize that anything was happening until the communicators in their safety suits came alive with the sound of her coughing.

"I'm sorry," he repeated, stepping forward and trying to touch the Master again.

But the Master cried out with rage and swung a fist at him, just like he had back then. The fist luckily missed his face and hit him with a heavy thump in the chest instead, though it prompted Jack to finally pull his gun out and point it at the Master.

"Look at my face," the Doctor urged. "My face is different. So is yours. And the TARDIS, see how she's changed? This is a different time."

He remembered hearing the Master's voice in his ear, calling out over the communicator in fear. He wanted to know where Qhoya was and why she had gone there. Why was she coughing? What were her symptoms? The patients were dying all around them and nothing they could do would save them, and now the Master could hear his sister coughing somewhere.

She had torn her suit. A stupid mistake, she explained with laboured breath. She had been setting up the computer to initiate its purge sequence for the lab and she accidentally activated one of the laser scalpels, burning the tiniest of holes into her glove.

"Tell your dog he better put that weapon away unless he intends to use it," the Master hissed venomously. "Before I break his neck."

"Jack, put the gun away," the Doctor ordered, being sure to speak clearly in English now. "Threatening him won't make this better. He already feels that you're a natural threat and a gun in the hands of an immortal man is not going to improve his mood."

"He hit you," Jack answered simply. "Twice."

"Wilfred will be back soon and it won't matter. Put the gun away."

They could hear her dying over the communicators and they all knew that it was too late. Qhoya said goodbye to her brother with kind and loving words, asking him to fight for the goodness left in him. Even as she spoke, the Master was running for the lab, acting off of pure instinct without a single thought to the consequence.

They couldn't save her. It was simply too late. Trying to get in that lab could release the virus once again and the Doctor simply couldn't risk that. Besides, the lab likely would purge before they even got near it. Maybe if he was faced with the same situation today he could save her, but back then he was young and inexperienced.

In their very first bodies, the Master may have been tall, but he was very thin and not very strong, so it had been easy to hold him back. The Doctor dragged him back to the TARDIS, hoping to keep him inside until he could calm down and accept the situation. But as they listened to Qhoya's coughing growing louder and more frequent, the Master begged to go back for her.

"I'm not putting it away until you get him under control," Jack said stubbornly. "There are still people on this ship that can die, and a lot more outside. I'm not letting this maniac hurt anyone without a fight."

"He won't put the gun down," the Doctor told the Master quickly in his native tongue. "Because he's afraid of you. He's only afraid. If we can just calm down and talk about this, he'll put it away."

Before the Master could answer Wilfred hurried back into the room, clumsily hiding the syringe behind his back. The old man approached the Master with very little caution, beginning to assure him that everything was alright. Wilfred didn't get within fifteen feet before the Master snarled a threat in Gallifreyan.

"Wilfred, step back," the Doctor said calmly.

"He won't hurt me," Wilf answered in almost disbelief.

"He will. He's not himself right now, trust me."

They could hear her ragged breathing, her painful coughing, until the lab finished its countdown. They heard the whoosh of flames and a brief second of her screaming before the sound cut out, and then the Master lost his last ounce of control.

He launched himself at the Doctor, just as he did now. He called him a selfish bastard and a murderer and a coward while he delivered blow after blow in his blind fury.

In their past days, the two had grappled and fought until the Master finally pinned the Doctor down with his hands around his throat. The Doctor realized then that the Master was beyond coming back and that he would die if he didn't fight. A tough struggle and a few good kicks managed to knock the Master off, but he didn't know what to do next. When the Master flew at him again, all he could think to do was pick up one of the hard helmets from their suits that had been dropped on the floor and hit him in the head with it as hard as he could. The visor shattered and the Master fell, but when he saw the Master trying to get back up with that same rage in his eyes, he acted purely out of instinct.

He picked up a shard of the shattered visor and drove it straight into the Master's belly.

"Doctor!"

A gunshot went off somewhere, but the Doctor was only vaguely aware of it. There were fists striking him, rattling his thoughts into a blurred mess and making it difficult to stand. He couldn't look away from the anger and the pain in those eyes, couldn't stop thinking about how he had caused them to look like that. Another gunshot ripped through the air and suddenly the Master was falling, just like he had before.

He remembered listening to the Master gasp for air and looking into those bright blue eyes, dying for the very first time. He remembered the sting in his fingers from where the shard had cut him while gripping it, and the warm sensation of the Master's blood pouring out of him. He pulled the shard out, crying out and screaming at the Master that he was sorry. He didn't mean to. He hadn't wanted to hurt him. He was so very sorry.

Now, as Wilfred injected the sedative, those now brown eyes looked up at him with a look of sudden clarity. "Did I hurt anyone?"

"No, everyone's fine, Harry," Wilfred answered quickly. "You'll be fine too. Just rest now."

The Master looked up at him fearfully, his eyes clouding over as the sedative took effect. Jack had made the first shot a warning, and the second a takedown. The bullet had ripped straight through the leg, knocking the Master down without causing irreparable damage.

"It's going to be okay," the Doctor confirmed. "I've got you. It's just a scratch. You'll be fine."

"It wasn't your fault," the Master's words slurred together slightly as he spoke. "I know that. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for this."

"It's okay. Just go to sleep, alright? You have a rest and everything will be better in the morning. Listen to me, Master, everything is just fine."

"Doctor." The Master's eyes were beginning to slide shut, but he managed to get out one last whisper. "My name is Harry."

That day had been their very last adventure together. The uncertainty about their relationship had finally been put to an end when those blue eyes looked up at him and quivering lips choked out some of the hardest words he'd ever heard.

" _I will hurt you for this, Doctor. For everything. I will make you suffer."_

He remembered kissing the Master's forehead, touching those black curls one last time before they were gone. There was no going back now, he knew. His friend was gone forever.

While the Master gasped and groaned in pain on the floor, he had run over the console to take off. He didn't know what else to do, so he simply took the Master home. The TARDIS landed at the edge of the red fields, outside the great stone building where his family lived, and he flung open the doors.

As the Doctor and Jack worked together to lift the Master off the floor and get him to the medical room, he remembered Jinnar helping him doing the same thing so many years ago. Jinnar was the youngest in the family, his eyes full of fear and uncertainty as he stared at the gaping wound and listened to the terrible sounds escaping the Master's mouth. The boy was nearly in tears by the time they laid him down.

On that day, so very long ago, the Doctor carried his friend inside the home of his parents and left him there. The moment that the Master's skin began to glow, he ran. He couldn't watch brand new eyes open full of hatred and he couldn't bear facing a mother who had just lost a child.

"What the hell were you thinking?" he growled at Jack as they lifted the Master onto his operation table. "You could have killed him!"

"He could've killed  _you_!" Jack shouted back. "I told you he's dangerous! The guy has a flashback about his daughter and all of a sudden he's a threat to everyone around him. What if he got Wilfred?"

"Don't you use me to make him sound bad," Wilfred answered sternly. "I knew the risks when I signed up. The boy is ill—"

"He's not a boy, Wilfred," Jack sounded exasperated. "He's a man who has committed crimes most of us can only imagine with full knowledge and intent. You both might think he's some helpless patient, but I haven't forgotten what he's capable of."

"Don't talk about things you don't understand, Jack."

"I'm the only one here who  _does_  understand. You've both deluded yourselves into thinking that everything he's done is in the past and we can all be friends and play house together. You're making a huge mistake with this guy—"

"That's enough!" the Doctor roared, earning a moment of stunned silence. "In case you've forgotten, there's a man here with a bullet in his leg. Unless you intend to help me remove it, you can get out."

Jack stood and glared at him a moment before speaking again. "I am  _not_  apologizing for saving your life."

"Get out!"

As his old companion swept from the room like a storm, a part of him did feel bad for Jack. It was unfair to be angry with him when all he was doing was what he thought was necessary. Whatever actions he had taken, he was still only trying to help. A bullet in the leg was certainly nothing to get worried about when it came to a Time Lord and, with some rest and an accelerator, the Master would be back on his feet in a day or two. Jack could have easily shot him in the chest or in the head, but he had been careful not to do anything too harmful. Still, the Doctor couldn't help feeling angry over it.

Once he had the Master patched up and settled in his bed, he would go to Jack and apologize. In the meantime, he had work to do.

"You should teach me how to do stitches," Wilf said quietly as he slid a pillow under the Master's head and went to find a blanket. "With you two always finding ways to hurt yourselves, it might be a good idea to have an extra person who can put you back together."

The Doctor agreed and the two stayed silent for a moment as they gathered the supplies they were going to need. He thought about the night before and how wonderful it had been. He had let the thrill of it all get to his head and didn't stop to think about how badly things could still go if the Master wasn't cared for properly.

Wilfred was entirely right about overexerting him, and he didn't even know what they'd been up to in the night. Their activities were physically tiring as it was, but they both fully embraced the narin and let their minds meld together. It felt amazing at the time but it also quite exhausting on a mental and emotional level. It was a level of intimacy that their people usually saved for special occasions and days when not much else was expected of them, but it had been so long since he had been with someone who was even capable of that connection that the Doctor just dove into it. He had had a few other partners since being widowed, but nothing quite compared to the purity of fusing your soul with another person as well as your body.

He felt a bit guilty about it now. He should have known that the Master wasn't ready for it, or at least not without being able to get sufficient rest afterwards. He had pushed out the doctor part of his mind the moment he decided he wanted to invite the Master to his bed and embraced every particle of narin he tasted without any thought to the consequence.

The Doctor was shocked out of his train of thought when something cold and wet touched his face. He instinctively jerked away and looked down to see Wilfred smiling at him with a cloth in his hand.

"You're bleeding."

"Am I?" He touched his fingers to his brow, where Wilfred had placed the cloth, and they came away red. "So I am."

"He's got a good arm on him, you've got to give him that," Wilf said, reapplying the cloth and looking at him with kind eyes. "I know it's been rather awful, Doctor, but everything's alright. It's been two steps forward and one step back all along, so don't let it worry you. This is just one bad day out of many good ones."

"Thank you, Wilfred," he muttered, taking the cloth for himself.

"And Jack was only doing what he thought was best."

"I know."

He pulled a seat over to the table so that he could set to work and dig out the bullet, but Wilfred was still watching him intently.

"You could talk to me, you know," Wilf said kindly. "Harry talks to me about all sorts of things—the weather, things he'd like to do, things that are bothering him. He even tells me about where you come from sometimes, and some of the things that happened there. You could always talk to me too."

Wilfred wanted to know what happened. He wanted to know why the Master had finally become so infuriated that it officially ended their friendship, but he was too shy to ask. He was used to talking to the Master, who seemed comfortable with most conversations—even the ones that involved his greatest sins.

"Did I ever tell you about the time I met Shakespeare?"


	38. The Master

The Doctor was next to his bed, as expected, when he woke up. His brow had been broken open with brute force and his lip was swollen but it seemed to be the last thing on his mind. The Doctor apologized for pushing him too hard, for not paying attention when he complained, for establishing full telepathic connections. He stammered out apologies until finally, without being able to look the Master in the eye, he said he was sorry for leaving Qhoya behind.

It was almost pitiful, but it was simply who the Doctor was to carry that kind of guilt with him, even after centuries. The Doctor was still talking, saying that he had wished a thousand times that he had gone back or that he had summoned the courage to face the Master long before then, but the Master wasn't really listening anymore.

"Your face," he muttered, lifting up a hand to reach for the bruised flesh. "You look like such a wreck."

"I'll take an accelerator," the Doctor replied dismissively. "It'll be fine."

"That's not the point."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow at him, smiled in the way he did when he was not the least bit amused, and turned his eyes to the other side of the room. "Don't start. Don't even start."

The first time he hit Lucy, he hadn't meant to do it either. He had just been so angry, angrier still because he didn't understand why, and she kept trying to touch him or kiss him—anything to make him feel better. He pushed her away, but she was determined that she could calm him. Finally, he just lost control and slapped her hard enough to knock her off her feet.

She cried and he said he was sorry, promising he wouldn’t do it again. He really hadn't meant to hit her. But, after that, it just got easier and easier, until he could fool himself into thinking that she deserved it. He knew that sort of wickedness lived within him still. What if it was slowly beginning to creep out again?

"You should try to go back to sleep," the Doctor said quietly. "I'll let Wilfred know that you woke up so that he'll stop worrying."

"Is he okay?"

"He's fine. You didn't hurt anyone."

"Except you."

"I'm not hurt. I'm fine," the Doctor answered stubbornly. "It's getting late. Once everyone has gone to bed, I'll come back. I'll sleep in here tonight where I can keep an eye on you."

"Your bed is bigger," the Master replied, thinking with fondness of how wonderfully spacious and comfortable the Doctor's bed was. "And the walls are much better at keeping in sound."

"That's irrelevant. Two sleeping people don't make any sound," the Doctor said with finality. "And I'm not moving you until your leg is healed."

He only became aware of the pain when the Doctor said it. "What's happened to my leg?" he asked with a groan.

"Gunshot," the Doctor answered simply, with a slight edge to his voice.

He groaned again and flopped his head back on his pillow. "I am  _so_  tired of getting shot. I've lost my past  _three_  bodies in a row from gunshots and it's getting a bit old."

The Doctor frowned at him slightly. "Two."

He frowned back in confusion. "No . . . three."

"No, your last one was shot. The Professor was shot," the Doctor explained, holding up fingers as he listed them. "And the one before that was stabbed. I saw it."

The Doctor didn't know what happened next. He kind of wished he hadn't said anything now because it would surely upset him. Instead of explaining, he simply shook his head and used his hand to gesture putting a gun under his chin.

As expected, the Doctor looked horrified.

"I didn't know how long it would take to bleed out and I was just tired of hurting," he explained, feeling a bit sheepish all of a sudden. "Sorry."

"What are you saying sorry to me for?"

"You didn't need to know that."

The other Time Lord glanced about the room, trying to keep a straight face while looking very uncomfortable. "How many things do you keep from me for the sake of sparing me?"

"A few," he admitted. "And some to spare myself."

"We'll fix that," the Doctor said and leaned forward to plant a gentle kiss on his forehead. "In time. Now get some sleep."

Sleep was good and, for once, easy. He watched the Doctor stand up to leave, blinked, and suddenly he was alone in the dark. How long had passed now? It can't have been that long. The Doctor said he would come back when everyone else had gone to bed and there was no one with him.

His leg ached and, worse, he knew that it wasn't healing. The Doctor always had weird rules when it came to using accelerators, even when they were young and even more reckless than they were now. The Doctor wouldn't give him anything until he was well rested and there was no question as to his mental stability. For now, the leg would simply throb away, waking him up every time it so much as twitched.

"Harry?"

He must have drifted off again. He wished there was a clock in his room to let him know how much time was passing him by.

"Who's that?" he mumbled, blinking up at the blurry figure in front of the glaring light coming from the open door.

"Jack."

Wonderful.

"Can I come in?"

"Anything for my number one fan," he grumbled, trying to sit up in the bed and wincing as his leg protested.

He heard a funny rattling sound as Jack came in and closed the door behind him. The light was turned on and when he looked up Jack was holding out a glass to him. "I figured the Doctor wouldn't mind if I helped myself to some of his scotch."

He eyed the glass suspiciously before accepting it. "He doesn't like scotch anyway. He only drinks it when he's too stressed to care what it is."

"But you're a scotch man," Jack pulled up the chair next to his bed, the way the Doctor usually did, and made himself comfortable.

"I am," he agreed, carefully watching Jack take a sip of his own drink and glance casually about the room.

"What's that?" Jack asked, pointing to the metal plate on the wall.

"It's a portrait," he answered impatiently. "What are you doing in here?"

Jack looked him in the eye and smiled pleasantly. "I shot you today."

"And fuck you too, by the way."

"Just name a time and place," Jack chuckled. "I guess I just thought I should come and see that you were still alive. Maybe even apologize."

"Oh god, don't do that," he answered quickly. "Between the Doctor and Wilfred, I never get a moment's peace from apologies. Besides, I've done far worse to you."

"Good. I wasn't keen on the idea myself."

He hated it, but he found himself smiling. "So we're just going to sit here and drink?"

"I don't see why not," Jack answered simply, swirling the contents of his glass absent-mindedly and making the ice clink softly.

"Can I even have alcohol right now? I don't know what the Doctor's given me."

Jack's eyes widened a little, and then a slightly embarrassed grin spread across his face. "I don't know actually."

"Oh well," he muttered, taking a quick sip. "Maybe it'll do us all a favour."

There were a few moments of silence after that, in which they both just enjoyed the flavour of the scotch. It was strangely comfortable.

"So . . ." Jack said finally. "How often does that happen?"

"Hoping to get another shot in?"

"Hoping I don't have to."

He sighed, thinking back on the past few weeks. "In the beginning it was almost every time I woke up, or any time I got hungry. Now it's only every few days, depending on the situation of course."

"He didn't even try to stop you," Jack said quietly. "How has he survived you this long?"

He felt a twitch of annoyance inside him. This foolish little human with his foolish little assumptions, thinking he understood the big picture.

"The events I experience are usually based on memories. And believe it or not, Jack, I have more good memories with the Doctor than bad." He watched the surprise in those insolent blue eyes and was glad to feel he was finally putting Jack in his place. "We grew up together, completely inseparable. We went to school together. He even learned about medicine so that we could work together. I was the first person he thought of travelling with when he first got the TARDIS. I loved him very much from the time I was just a kid and it never went away, even after we became enemies. Whatever you think you know about our relationship, Jack, you're wrong."

Jack stayed quiet, absorbing his words. After a moment he took a sip of his drink and nodded, signalling the Master to continue.

"Most of the time I remember the war. He's told you about the war, hasn't he?"

"He has," Jack answered with another nod. "Or, at least, he's mentioned it."

Of course the Doctor wouldn't have given any detail. "The Doctor can usually calm me down just fine on his own. He's a friendly face in a frightening world, and he calms me down. Wilfred too, sometimes. They talk to me, help me realize which parts of what I'm experiencing are real and which parts are just, you know . . . imaginary. I scare them, yes, but I don't hurt them."

Jack waited again, letting the silence hang in the air before he took a deep breath. "What happened this time?"

"I was just tired," he said with a shrug of his shoulders. "I saw all the children and I was so tired that I couldn't remember why there were children everywhere. Then it was like my brain just picked the most likely solution—because I was supposed to be watching Kahlia." He stopped to take a quick drink, wanting desperately to avoid looking Jack in the eye. "She was my first child so the whole fatherhood thing was kind of new to me . . . I wasn't very good at it. But, any time it was possible, she would just beg and beg that I come get her and take her out for the day. Kids can make the worst parents into heroes, right?"

Jack nodded a little too knowingly. "Oh yeah."

"Anyway, I never held her hand the way you're supposed to. I'd just tell her not to wander off. Of course, I lost her in a crowd more than once." He thought of the first time he felt that panic, and of how profoundly it surprised him. "I could hear her calling to me. I could  _actually_ _hear_ her voice while the Doctor was telling me she was dead, and suddenly my memory just shifted. That had happened once before, see, except it wasn't Kahlia. I could hear my sister dying and the Doctor insisted that she was already dead and there was nothing we could do. And I just felt . . . enraged."

"So he didn't calm you down because he was what was making you angry."

"And he didn't fight back because he still thinks he deserves it." The Master felt sick to his stomach thinking about the sorry state of the Doctor's face. "See, the first time we had that fight, I'm the one who lost. And I lost badly. Apparently he still feels guilty about it."

"Apparently."

"Don't tell him I told you that."

Jack grinned. "We'll see."

He could tell from the way Jack gazed down into his drink that they were in for another long silence—the type of behaviour he had learned to recognize in the Doctor. "So why are you here, Jack?"

"Here on the ship or here in your room?"

"Both," he answered. "I'm assuming you're here in my room because you want to talk about why you're still here on the ship, even though you've done everything we needed you for. And, out of everyone on the ship, you can't possibly have done worse than me so who better to confess to?"

Jack smirked. "Alright," he said, taking a quick sip of his drink. "See if you can beat this . . . I have a daughter too, on Earth. A few months ago, I took her son, my grandson, and used him as a sacrifice to fight an alien invader that threatened the entire planet's population. I locked his mother out of the room, looked him in the eye, and flipped the switch. Then I stood there and just watched while he roasted from the inside out. How's that for your father of the year award, eh?"

The Master could see from the look in Jack's eyes that his light-hearted tone and another sip of scotch was all he could do to keep himself together when he recalled the story. "That's pretty terrible."

"Thanks," Jack laughed a little, though there was half a sob hidden behind it. "Alright, your turn. Tell me I'm not the worst father in the universe. Please, I'm dying to hear anything that makes me seem even slightly better."

He didn't know why he told Jack anything. Jack already knew too much about the things he'd done and considering that Jack was impossible to kill, that made him very uncomfortable. The last thing he wanted was to give a true immortal further reason to hate him. Maybe it was because he hoped it would gain some of Jack's trust, or maybe it was because the alcohol was interacting with whatever drugs the Doctor had given him. He didn't really know why, but he looked right into those unhappy eyes and decided he would tell the story.

"When the war came, my people brought me back from the dead to fight for them. When Kahlia found out, she begged to fight beside me and I let her because I knew she was loyal. If there was anyone I could trust to do their hardest to keep me alive, it was that mad little girl." He almost smiled when he remembered it. "She was all grown up, smart, and so fierce. For the first three years of the war we fought together and I think it was the first time I actually felt a real connection to her as my daughter. She was so like me."

Jack nodded his head slowly. "She died fighting with you?"

He shook his head and took a sip from his glass to wash out the bad taste in his mouth. "We had an enemy in the war. She came from nowhere, with an army already prepared, acting separately from the Daleks and against us. She took Time Lords prisoner and tortured them through every regeneration they had left, then broadcast the images to my people to inspire fear and fill their heads with nightmares. But she had an informer. Someone was telling her about our movements so that she could capture our kind when they were alone or with little defense." He took another drink, to calm his hearts as they sped up, reliving the memory again. "Time travel is a very tricky and dangerous thing . . . we picked up a signal travelling from Gallifrey to our enemy's ship and thought we had finally found our informer. Kahlia and I went to deal with them but, when we arrived, we saw . . . it was her mother. Worse still, I could see that she was younger than I'd ever seen her. She had a device that could act like a calling card through time, summoning her from the past when needed to come to the time of the war and gather information. Then she could just jump back to safety when the job was done."

He remembered the shock of seeing her there, huddled over her equipment to send off information. Her eyes widened when she saw him, even though she was too young to know him yet, and while he stood and stared she picked up her communicator and whispered breathlessly:  _"He's here."_

"I was . . . the war had already changed me, even though I'd seen nothing compared to what was to come. I was quick to anger, quick to kill, and forgiveness was not an option. I had felt something for her once and now I found out she was a traitor before I had even met her."

He saw Jack's eyes widen with sudden understanding and remembered Kahlia's eyes changing exactly the same way. He remembered feeling her hands grab desperately at his arm, trying to stop him. And, while Kahlia begged, that woman just stood and stared at him with all the strength and defiance he had once found so captivating.

"We both knew that she was too young for Kahlia to have been born yet. If I killed her, Kahlia wouldn't just die . . . she would never have existed." He paused to remember the tears in Kahlia's eyes, the complete disbelief and shock on her face as he raised his gun. "I shot her anyway."

He waited for Jack to say something, but they just stared at each other. Part of him wanted to say that he realized what a terrible mistake he had made and that, when Berran came along, he had changed. He wanted to step up for his son and be the father he couldn't be for Kahlia. But the other part of him told him that, in the end, that didn't change anything and there was no point trying to pretend that it did.

"To fatherhood," he said, raising his glass and then quickly finishing its contents.

Jack raised his glass in turn and finished his own drink, but didn't say anything.

"I haven't even told the Doctor that story," he said quietly, letting his head fall back against the wall behind him. "And now the knowledge of my crimes will live forever, with the man who can never die."

"I won't tell," Jack promised.

"Tell whoever you want," he snapped back, feeling suddenly angry at the tone of pity he heard in Jack's voice. "It wouldn't surprise anyone anyway."

A long, tense silence passed in which he dwelled upon the memories in misery and Jack stared at him in a way that pierced through him. He was too transparent now—too easy to see with that much emotion on the surface and he didn't want Jack to witness it.

"Thanks for the drink," he muttered, pushing his empty glass into Jack's hands. "You got what you want. Now let me get some sleep."

"Right," Jack stood up, lingered a moment as though he had something to say, and then silently walked towards the door.

"And Jack," the Master said just before the other men stepped through the doorway. "Next time, aim for my head. And don't stop."

"You got it," Jack answered and then closed the door behind him.


	39. The Doctor

As the evening progressed, the Doctor became more and more thankful for Wilfred and his ability to simply forgive and stay happy. Wilfred fretted over the Doctor for the beating he took, fretted over the Master for the bullet he took, and fretted over Jack for the scolding he took and because he was certain that he must feel terrible about it. No one was to blame in Wilfred's eyes, and no one had done anything wrong.

The Doctor wished things could be so simple for everyone.

He knew that Jack was only protecting him, but he couldn't help being furious about the shot. He hated the use of guns at the best of times but, when they were being used against his own people, the very thought of it made his hair stand on end.

And, as if his day didn't need to be any more complicated, now Donna was hiding something. While the Master slept, he went to check on her and talk for a while. He wanted to vent a little and ask her advice, but he knew it was a bad idea the moment he laid eyes on her.

She said she was feeling much better, but she looked far worse. Her eyes had that faraway look they got when her mind was somewhere else entirely and she looked a shade paler than before. At first, he worried it might be a rejection of the medication but a quick series of tests showed that her mind was functioning just fine.

"Did something happen while we were gone?"

She smiled a little, but she looked at the floor when she answered. "No, everything's fine. Just a bit tired, that's all."

"Come on, Donna," he reached forward and took her hand. "I've seen you tired a hundred times. You get louder, not quieter."

Her eyes darted around the room as she thought and then, with a little huff, looked back at him. "Why do you keep so many secrets from me?" she asked with sudden accusation in her voice.

He blinked in surprise. "What . . . I—what do you mean?"

"I mean that it's one thing when you won't talk about something because it upsets you, but it's entirely another when you keep secrets just because you  _can_."

"Donna, I don't—"

"Oh, don't give me that rubbish," she interrupted, smacking him with her free hand, but keeping the other holding onto his. "Sometimes I think you lie just because you're so used to it, and not because you actually need to anymore."

She was right. "Are you talking about me and . . .?"

"Harry, yeah," Donna answered irritably, releasing his hand and crossing her arms. "You sit there and pretend like nothing's going on, like we're all so stupid that nobody's going to notice. He looks at you like it's his bleeding wedding night and you go swan off for a little dance between friends because there's nothing better to do? Then this  _morning_ —"

"I was just—"

"Shut up, I know what you were doing!" she held her hand up to silence him. "None of us are stupid, Doctor. You're not fooling anyone. It's just offensive, is what it is."

He gave her a moment, to make sure that she was finished talking before he spoke up. "Is it alright?"

She huffed again and rolled her eyes towards the ceiling. "Is  _what_  alright?"

"Me and him, what we're doing," he answered quietly. "Is it okay? I mean, with you?"

She tried to hold on to her look of annoyance, but it was fading fast. "Do you love him?"

"No," he answered truthfully. "Well, not really. It's been . . . it's not been very long."

"So . . . not yet," Donna offered helpfully.

"Not yet," he agreed.

"He loves you, you know."

"I know," he nodded, unable to hold back a smile.

Donna's scowl broke into a grin the moment she saw him smile. "Has he said it yet?"

"No. Well . . . he kind of did, once. But it didn't really count because he was being a prat so . . . not properly."

"But you're happy, yeah?"

He looked at the concern in her eyes and suddenly felt extremely conscious of the fact that his face was bruised. "Yeah."

"Then it's okay," she said with a smile, then suddenly raised her finger at him threateningly. "Only next time don't answer the door when you're having a shag!"

He could feel the blood rushing to his cheeks and couldn't think of anything he could say, so he simply sunk into his chair and let his face burn.

Donna laughed at him and shoved his shoulder playfully. "I'm just saying you could've left it. I was about three seconds from walking away anyway when I heard you stumbling about." She grinned widely and dropped her voice to a whisper. "Is that why you still call him Master?"

"Wh-what?" His eyes widened in surprise. "Donna!"

"Oh, yes, Master. Please, Master," Donna mocked in her best imitation of his voice. "As Master commands."

"I don't talk like that," he muttered, feeling his ears burning now.

"But you still call him Master," she answered, clearly delighted by the embarrassment on his face. "Go on, you look me right in my face and tell me you don't call him Master while you're having a go."

"I'm not talking about this."

"Fine, I'll just keep talking by myself."

Oh, no. "Well, that's his name!" he cried out in exasperation. "I've been calling him that for centuries. It's got nothing to do with . . . you know, with—"

"Shagging?"

" _That_." He sunk a little deeper into his chair. "Are you done now?"

"Done." She held her hands up in mock surrender. "All I'm saying is you can't call him Master and expect that I'm not gonna make fun of you for it."

"That's his name," he answered stubbornly.

"When's the last time you heard him tell anyone that was his name?"

"He said it to Jack."

"He doesn't like Jack."

"Oh, don't even get me started on that," he groaned, remembering very clearly how quick Jack was to get out his gun. "I should really go. I told him I'd be back soon."

"Told who?"

"The Ma—" he saw the cheeky smile appear on her face and stopped himself. "Harry. Oh, shut up."

"I didn't say a word."

He left Donna in considerably better spirits and having completely forgotten why he was worried about her in the first place. As he walked down the hallway he felt surprisingly good. His face hurt and the Master may have been wounded, but they would be fixed soon enough. Whatever may have happened today, he had two people on his ship that he thought he had lost forever and the TARDIS was full of life. That was reason enough to be happy.

When he finished his nightly routine and crept into the Master's bedroom, all was silent and dark. Small though it might have been, the Master had been sure to keep against the wall and leave enough space in the bed for the Doctor to climb in after him. He listened to those soft breathing sounds as he got comfortable and looked forward to a night of calm, peaceful sleep, but he didn't even have time to close his eyes before he felt the Master shifting.

He lay perfectly still on his back, almost holding his breath in fear of waking his sleeping companion, but to no avail. A hand slid up onto him and across his chest, trying to pull the Doctor a little closer.

"What took you so long?" the Master asked sleepily, then tugged lightly at the Doctor's shirt. "And why are you wearing these?"

"They're called pyjamas," he whispered quietly. "Or some people call them night clothes. They're meant for sleeping in."

"Then you came to the wrong room."

He rolled his eyes but caught himself smiling anyway. Even half asleep the Master was unable to control himself. The Doctor thought about simple pushing his wandering hands away and telling him to go to sleep, but quickly decided that a little affection after a hard evening couldn't hurt. The last thing he wanted was for the Master to think he was upset over the bruises he'd received that day.

The Doctor rolled onto his side so that the Master wouldn't have to move, sparing him the pain from his leg. He welcomed the touches and returned them, embracing the feeling of skin against skin and lips against lips. For a long while there were no words or even much transfer of thought, he was so wrapped up in the moment that he didn't stop to think when the Master began pulling at his shirt.

He was quick to assist, casting the shirt aside to be forgotten. It wasn't until a moment later, when the Master attempted to shift his body and winced in pain, that he remembered he wasn't supposed to get carried away again. Of course it was all new and exciting and difficult to hold back, but such carelessness was what had gotten the Master shot today.

"We need to stop," he gasped, only just realizing that he was short of breath. "We can't. We can't."

But the Master had his arms wrapped around the Doctor's body, preventing him from getting away and pulling at him gently so that he was half lying on top of the Master. He felt the strength of those arms keeping him in place being completely contradicted by the light, feathery touches of the Master's fingers teasing the sensitive skin surrounding his shevra.

"We can't," he repeated breathlessly when the Master's mouth attached to his neck. "You need to rest. We have to stop."

He could feel the Master's lips pull into a smile against his skin, followed by a hand drifting downward to reach between his legs. "It doesn't feel like you want to stop."

"Don't," he said, making a pathetically weak attempt to push the Master's hand away. "No, you can't."

"I can," the Master answered and pushed him so that they rolled and the Doctor found himself lying on his back beneath the other Time Lord. "You watch me."

He could feel the Master's body trying to adjust itself to put as little weight on his injured leg as possible, and it made him feel terrible. He was supposed to come in so that he could keep an eye on his patient, not to encourage the Master to stay awake and engage in physical activity. They should stop. The only responsible thing to do was to make him stop.

But his mind and his body disagreed. His mouth was telling the Master to stop and that he needed to rest, but his body was raising its hips to assist in the removal of his trousers and his hands were eager to participate. Too long had he gone without touch that one intimate night and one exciting morning had not been enough to satiate the forgotten hunger within him.

Screw it. He took hold of the Master's head to kiss him, shifting his body to be as helpful as possible so that the Master wouldn't have to move as much. He must be so strong to simply ignore the pain and carry on without so much as a pained facial expression.

"Don't accept the narin," was the only responsible thing he was able to say and follow in the end. Luckily, it didn't take much work to ignore the psychic part of it all and focus purely on the physical.

When the Master finally slid inside him, it felt like the first sip of cold water on a hot day. It was wonderfully satisfying and not nearly enough at the same time. A shuddering moan escaped him as the Master began to move and suddenly a hand closed over his mouth.

"Shh," the Master whispered into his ear. "You have to be quiet in here."

He nodded his head quickly, and tried to focus on breathing for a little while to prevent any more sound. His hands travelled down the Master's body, seizing him by the hips and pulling, trying to bring him in further. All it took was for him to hear the faintest gasp in his ear and he momentarily lost control again.

The sound was just the tiniest of vocal groans, but the Master clapped a hand over his mouth again. It didn't stop him from moving—if anything he was thrusting even harder now, and the Doctor was beginning to feel the narin pulling at his consciousness. His mind wanted so much to slip into its state of heightened senses that the fight against it was almost a high in itself.

There was a soft knocking from the door and the Master's hand pressed a little harder down on his mouth.

"Harry?" Wilfred's voice drifted through. "Everything alright?"

The Master barely had time to yank the blanket up, pulling it over his shoulder so that it would cover the Doctor's face as well, before the door cracked open ever so slightly.

"A little privacy please, Grandfather!" the Master shouted out and he heard the door slam shut again.

"Sorry!" Wilf's voice came through the wall again. "Sorry, Harry!"

He was surprised to find himself fighting the urge to laugh in a situation where he normally would have been absolutely mortified. His body shook from the restrained laughter as the blanket was pulled away from his face and he heard the Master chuckle quietly in his ear as well.

A moment later, the Master's thrusts began to weaken and slow down a little. His leg must have been tired, and probably killing him with pain. It was stupid to be doing this in the first place, but this position was just asking for it. The Doctor tried to sit up a little, pushing back on the Master's shoulders to make room, but the Master simply shoved him down again.

"I'm not finished with you yet," the Master growled, holding him down firmly.

"Yes," he answered, though it came out sounding more like a moan than a word. "Yes, I want to help."

He pushed again and this time the Master relented, allowing the Doctor to roll him onto his back again. Now that Wilfred had been warned away he felt he could be a little more daring and climbed over the other body. With his arms bent back behind him to hold himself up and his eyes turned upward to the ceiling, he lowered himself down onto the Master. Years of running so much had given him good, strong legs with plenty of endurance, so they were able to lift his body up and down without tiring.

He could hear the Master's breathing clearly behind him—still fast and heavy but missing the pained edge to it that it had a moment ago. He could lay back and relax and let his Doctor take care of everything.

"Doctor," the Master's breath was intensifying and he felt hands grasp him firmly by the hips and pull him down hard. "Doctor, I—"

He fought to move against the Master's steel grip on him, a grin spreading across his face at the way it made the Master move inside him. It felt amazing and, from the way the Master was panting, he had a feeling that it didn't just feel good for himself.

He forced the muscles inside him to tense and contract and achieved the desired effect. The Master's fingers dug into his hips so hard that it hurt and he felt the shuddering release inside him while the Master attempted to stifle a groan.

He thought that once the Master was done he could finish himself easily, but he wasn't given the chance. The moment the Master's body relaxed enough to release the Doctor's hips, he felt a hand snake around to his front and take a hold of him.

"Keep moving," the Master ordered, though he sounded considerably short of breath now.

Another hand appeared on his back and began the massage his shevra, shooting waves of pleasure through him now threefold. It was only another minute before he felt that old, familiar rush taking over him and his legs were finally beginning to ache from the strain of the increasingly desperate movements.

"Do it, Doctor," the Master ordered him again. "Come for me."

When his body finally released he heard the Master's breath speed up again and the hips beneath him rose and pushed up with all their strength. Waves of his own pleasure must have been striking the Master, sending him through a second, phantom climax.

As soon as it was over, his first thought was that Wilfred would have definitely heard them. Hopefully he had been quiet enough that Wilf would think the Master was alone but, if Jack or Donna heard any of it, they would know exactly what was happening.

He felt a familiar rush of blood to his face at the thought and quickly tried to push it from his mind, slinking shamefully back onto the mattress. Maybe the Master heard his thoughts or could see his face because he chuckled a little to himself. He tried his best to ignore it and went to search in the Master's laundry hamper for a towel.

"How's your leg?" he asked as he was climbing back into bed.

"Well there's still a hole in it, but not bad. How's your face?"

"Fine. Barely feel it." He chose not to mention the growing ache in his ribs where he'd also taken a punch or two. "But you!" He lightly punched at the Master's chest. "You're so bad! We shouldn't have done that."

The Master grinned, looking all too pleased with himself. "Worth it. Besides, you're just too easy."

"Did Wilfred see me?" he asked, remembering with complete horror that the door had been opened.

"I don't think so," the Master chuckled, wrapping an arm around the Doctor's waist. "It probably would have looked pretty obvious if he got a good view, but I don't think he really looked."

"Do you think he knows I'm in here?"

"Maybe. But it's more likely that he thought I was flying solo," the Master answered with a little shrug of his shoulders. "I haven't told him about us, and I think he's pretty sure I would tell him if anything happened between us."

He raised an eyebrow. "You say that like he would be expecting it."

"Well . . . you know how he is. He's clever. He picks up on things. He asked me a while back if I had any feelings for you."

"And you said  _yes_?" the Doctor asked, surprised.

"Well, I wasn't gonna lie, was I? What's the point?" The Master sighed in annoyance. "My god, how old are you? It's not like I was going to die of embarrassment if another person knew I had a secret crush on someone. Come on, Doctor, it's a perfectly normal conversation to have with a friend."

"It's just . . . it's not exactly normal for the time period he was born in . . ." the Doctor answered quietly, suddenly feeling a little embarrassed. "Humans weren't exactly accepting of two men in the twentieth century."

"Doctor, he danced with two grown men in front of an entire crowd of people. I don't think he gives a damn about what was considered normal when he was born. Besides, we're not human."

That was true. "You can tell him," he muttered. "If you want to. Everyone else knows anyway."

"Well, I'm hardly gonna go up to him in the morning and tell him exactly what he walked in on. The poor guy probably feels bad enough for me, but if he knew  _you_  were in here—"

"He'd spend the whole day fussing over it and apologizing."

"And probably trying to arrange time for us to be alone together by getting the others out of the way with poor excuses."

"And the advice."

"And the  _questions_."

"Don't tell him," the Doctor decided quickly. "Well . . . tell him, but not tomorrow."

"Got it." The Master's arm gave him a light squeeze, and he responded to the silent request by positioning himself better against him so that they were both comfortable enough to fall asleep that way. "How should I tell Lucy? I mean, I know you're the sort to just disappear in time so that they never see you again, but I think I should tell her. Ohh, she's going to kick up a storm."

His heart sank a little but he pulled it right back up. This was who the Master was, and he'd decided that they'd never be happy if he got upset every time the illness bled through. It wasn't fair to the Master to do anything other than simply correct his memory and carry on.

"Lucy's dead," he said as kindly as he could.

"Is she?"

"Yes."

"Oh . . . I'd forgotten." The Master paused a moment to think about it. "Yes, she shot me and then . . . she died when I was resurrected."

"That's right."

"And Kahlia's dead."

"Yes."

"And Berran and the baby."

"Yes."

" . . . I'm not very good luck, am I?"

"I'm still here."

The Master's eyes looked into his and the clarity returned to them. "Despite my best efforts," he said with a smile.

"You'll have to try harder," he answered with a smile of his own and pecked a quick kiss on his lips. "Now go to sleep."


	40. The Master

The Doctor's need to get up early was actually a blessing today. The Master felt terrible and he would rather the Doctor not see him until he had sorted himself out. His leg throbbed horribly and he had a headache on top of it now. If he hadn't been certain that he was going to be sick, he would have stayed in bed.

When he sat up, he saw a pair of crutches laying on the floor, a glass of water with a couple of pills sitting on the nightstand, and a post-it note next to them. The Doctor had written it in Gallifreyan, probably worried that someone else might come in and read it, simply stating that he had gone to shower and get dressed and would be back soon. When he reached the end of the note he saw a word he hadn't seen nor heard in years – _lahret_. A word of affection from back home one would usually say to a spouse or their children when leaving or at the end of a message, a bit like signing a letter with a kiss.

Despite his pain and discomfort, the Master found himself smiling at the little yellow note. His Doctor would turn back into the old sap he once was yet. He took a quick swig from the water glass but left the pills, opened the nightstand drawer to drop the note in and pulled out a pair of pyjama pants.

It took a little work to get them on, sharp pains shooting up his leg every time he touched the skin anywhere around the bullet wound. He wanted to sit and rest for a minute once he had succeeded in his task, finding it to be surprisingly exhausting, but his stomach turned over and he realized he had to get moving quickly.

His whole body felt weak, making everything seem a bit wobbly once he did manage to get to his feet, and standing up made his head swim. The crutches helped because he didn't need to put any weight on his injured leg, but even just holding his foot up from the floor was painful. He only managed one step before the terrible swaying in his head caused him to lose his balance. He dropped one of his crutches, just managing to keep himself up by shooting his hand against the wall and catching himself. The almighty clattering of noise from it all struck his already pounding head like a hammer.

He was staring down at the crutch on the floor, contemplating how best to get it back, when he heard a merciful knock on the door.

"Are you okay in there, Harry?"

Despite the situation, the Master felt a bit like laughing when he realized that, for the first time ever, Wilfred was waiting for an answer before opening the door. "Please, come in," he answered quickly. "I could use some help."

The door opened, and Wilfred hurried in. The old man knew exactly what to do without being told, which he was incredibly grateful for because it hurt to think, let alone speak. The fallen crutch was handed back to him and Wilfred put an arm around his waist to help him keep his balance as they made their way over to the bathroom.

There wasn't much left in him, but it all managed to find its way back up anyway. Even after it was all gone, his stomach jumped and rolled around so much that Wilfred wound up giving him a glass of water just so that he would have something to throw back up. That seemed to finally satisfy his stomach and it decided to give him a rest.

The Master sat on the floor with his back leaning against the wall, completely exhausted. His bed was simply too far away and he didn't think he could get back up even if he wanted to. He just wanted to stay on the floor and sleep.

"Come on, lad," Wilfred said, reaching down to help him up.

"No," he groaned. "Please, no. Just let me sleep."

"You're not sleeping on the bathroom floor, Harry," Wilfred answered sternly. "The Doctor would throw a right fit and your mother would turn over in her grave. Now get up and we'll get you in the shower. A little water will do you good."

"I  _can't_."

"Quit your whining. Up."

It seemed insane to him that a mere eighty-year-old human was telling him what to do, more so because he was obeying him. Wilf was so kind and gentle that, when his voice became stern and requests became orders, it seemed like the world might implode if he didn't listen. And so the Master found himself struggling to his feet with Wilfred assisting him, every muscle in his body threatening to give out any second.

Luckily, the shower was only a few feet away and the stone walls were built with a seat in it. He'd never really used the seat before and always thought it was a bit silly, but he was so thankful for it now.

"I won't look," Wilfred said, helping him stand before the seat. "See if you can get your trousers down."

That was easy enough. The trousers were pretty loose, so he just had to give them a little tug to make them fall to his feet, then Wilfred carefully helped him sit. The old man was careful to keep his eyes averted until he was able to hand the Master a towel to lie across his waist and, despite how miserable he felt, he found himself chuckling.

"It's only proper," was all Wilfred had to say about it.

As much as he hadn't wanted to go in the shower, he was now very glad for it. Wilfred set the water running nice and cool, soothing his pounding head and easing the exhaustion out of his body. He was given a few minutes to enjoy it and wake up before Wilfred peeked his head in again.

The pills that had been sitting on his night stand were given to him with another glass of water and he decided it was safe to take them now that his stomach was calm. After that he was told to just sit still while Wilfred washed him. He couldn't deny that it was a bit humiliating, but he was far too tired to care.

Wilfred allowed his own clothes to get soaked through as he reached into the shower, using a soaped cloth to gently wash the Master’s body. He fell asleep at some point, only waking up when the pain in his leg suddenly increased and he looked down to see Wilfred carefully removing the dressing from the wound. The skin all around it was red and tender, but the bullet hole itself didn't look too bad.

"Might sting a bit," Wilfred warned before he began to clean the wound.

The Master couldn't even remember the last time someone washed his hair for him, but there was something strangely relaxing about it. Wilfred handed him a cloth to hold over his eyes to keep the shampoo out, something he no doubt learned by getting shampoo in his daughter's eyes and then having to deal with the subsequent crying. That made him feel like laughing too.

He couldn't tell if he was falling asleep or not, but time didn't seem to be working quite right. At some point he looked up past Wilfred and saw the Doctor standing in the doorway of the bathroom, looking terribly concerned. When did he get there?

He smiled at him, and the Doctor smiled back but it didn't look very convincing. It was only then that he noticed Wilfred was talking, explaining to the Doctor how he had found the Master in his room and what happened afterwards. The Doctor asked if he had taken he pills before or after he had gotten sick and a few other questions. He was very relieved to hear Wilfred tell the Doctor that crutches simply wouldn't work and that they'd need to dig out the wheelchair again.

Eventually he was handed the cloth and the shower curtain was closed fully, giving him some privacy so that he could finish the last bit of the wash on his own. He could hear the Doctor and Wilfred muttering to each other but couldn't make out what they were saying over the noise of the shower.

Finally, the water was shut off and he was handed new towels to dry himself off as much as he could. The Doctor put a new dressing on his leg and new pyjamas were brought to him, despite him repeatedly saying that he didn't want to wear pyjamas all day. Getting his trousers back on was going to be much more difficult with Wilf trying to help him keep his modesty but luckily the Doctor stepped in, claiming that it only made sense that he help the Master keep his balance because he was stronger.

The moment Wilf turned away, the Doctor simply rolled his eyes and helped him stand up without fussing over keeping him covered. The pills seemed to have taken affect by then because it didn't feel like the world was turning on its head when he stood up, though he still felt a bit weak.

"Feeling any better?" Wilfred asked, handing him a shirt once he had been helped back into his chair.

The Doctor was busy adjusting the footrest on the chair and let his fingers touch the Master's bare ankle, letting a small stream of comforting emotion pass into him.

"Yes, thank you, Grandfather," he answered quietly. "That was very kind of you."

"Just doing my job," Wilf answered happily. "Now, a spot of breakfast ought to give you some energy back."

For a moment he thought the worst had passed. The drugs were kicking in and easing his pain, he would have some breakfast and rehydrate, and then he could go back to bed and sleep away the remaining discomfort. But when the Doctor pushed his wheelchair back into the bedroom, he was met with a set of deep blue eyes.

"Hi, Daddy."

It hurt instantly. It physically hurt. His body instinctively moved forward in his seat, his hand reaching out for the ghost in front of him before he remembered that it couldn't possibly be real. He quickly lowered his hand and sat back in his seat, but it was far too late to even hope that the Doctor didn't notice.

"What is it?" the Doctor asked immediately, stopping all movement.

"It's nothing," he answered, watching those blue eyes staring at him, innocent and happy. "Just my imagination."

"Should we wait?"

"No," he answered quickly with an unintended edge to his voice. "Let's just go. Please."

No one asked him any other questions as they pushed him out into the hallway. Wilfred popped into his own room to change into something dry and the Doctor took the moment of privacy to give him a few comforting kisses. Once they were moving again, the Master took a deep breath, remembered where he was, and reminded himself that Berran was dead. But he could hear those little feet pattering behind him, trying to keep up.

"Dad?"

He was there, right beside him. But he couldn't be. Berran was dead. He wasn’t real.

"The baby's crying."

No, he wasn’t. The baby was dead too. The Doctor told him that just last night. He'd named the baby Wilson, after Grandfather. If he could remember that, he could remember that both his boys died a long time ago. He turned his face away from Berran and tried to block out the sound of his voice.

He had to get the situation under control. If he ever wanted an accelerator for his leg, he had to be able to show the Doctor that he mentally sound. Further still, the Doctor wouldn't take an accelerator either until the Master was fully healed—he wanted to make sure he was available in case he was needed.

Jack and Donna were already in the kitchen, laughing with each other when they came in. They stopped and looked over, happily said hello, and then Jack got a look at the wheelchair.

"That's a little excessive, don't you think?"

"It's not the bullet that's the problem, Jack," the Doctor answered quietly. He couldn't see the Doctor's face, but he could tell from his voice that he must have scowled when he said it.

But he saw Donna looking at him, with a kind sort of pity in her eyes, and he could hear her thoughts whispering. She felt bad for him. She was remembering the energy she'd seen in him on the night they danced and how no one would ever imagine this side of him.

He wasn't a fan of pity, but he supposed he could take some happiness from the fact that she cared.

The Master wasn't about to get out of his wheelchair to sit on one of the bar stools, so the Doctor found a little table to bring over for him. He tried his best to ignore Berran sitting on the floor beside him, playing with one of those puzzle cubes he had loved so much. Three years old and the boy could solve puzzle cubes within minutes. He would grow up to be a true genius.

If he had lived. He had to remember that.

The Doctor asked Donna about her wedding and she set off on the longest description he'd ever heard. It wasn't exactly interesting to him but at least it was a distraction. She was still talking about the nightmare of the missing rings when Wilfred brought him a plate of his breakfast.

"Doctor," the Master said quietly, hoping to get the Doctor's attention without interrupting Donna. "What happened to my wedding ring?"

The Doctor looked at him and he noticed Wilf's eyes shift over as well. "I burned it with the rest," the Doctor answered in nearly a whisper. "I'm sorry."

"No, no, that's alright," he said with a little shrug of his shoulders. "I don't need it anymore anyway." He didn't even know why he asked really. He supposed maybe the Doctor had put it somewhere for safe keeping, but then he shouldn't really want it back anyway. It was a silly question really.

Food would help him feel better, he decided quickly, and began working on the breakfast Wilf had made for him. Donna finished her story, and he listened to Jack jump in with wedding stories of his own—though it seemed to be the stag parties he was really interested in talking about.

Berran got up off the floor and wandered over, his little hands grasping the armrest of his chair. "Can I have some?"

He wasn't really paying attention, more interested in Jack's story, so he simply pushed his plate a little to the side. "Go on then."

Jack was a good storyteller, he had to give him that. He watched the Doctor smirking and shaking his head while Donna laughed and interrupted with exclamations of "You did  _not_!"

"I want this one," Berran said, pointing to the half muffin Wilf had given him.

"No, that's got blueberries in it. You don't like blueberries," he muttered. "Here, try this." He picked up a spoonful of scrambled eggs and held it out for Berran to take a bite.

Now that his stomach was waking up again, the Master realized how terribly hungry he was. The Doctor insisted that Wilfred tell them about his wedding, a story which he really would like to hear himself, so he alternated between taking a bite for himself and then giving Berran a spoonful to keep him quiet. Wilfred was able to tell his story and make everyone laugh while being able to keep that wonderful warmth that was so captivating.

Berran started pulling on the armrest of the chair, trying to lift himself over it. "No, you can't sit on me. Stay there," the Master said, gently pushing on the boy's shoulders to get his feet back on the floor. "Dad's leg is hurt. You can't sit on me, Berran."

"Harry?"

He looked up, holding back his squirming son, and saw everyone just looking at him. Wilfred had stopped telling his story and Donna stood frozen, holding a cup to her lips without drinking.

"Sorry. He's just hungry," he said, feeling a bit embarrassed as he finally managed to get both Berran's feet on the floor. "Go ask Grandfather if he'll give you some eggs."

"There's no one there, Harry," Wilfred said, his eyes taking on that same look of pity that Donna had.

He smiled a little awkwardly, not really understanding the joke. "What do you mean?"

"Why are you in the chair?" the Doctor asked simply.

His first thought was to say that he'd broken his leg. But no, that's not right. That happened ages ago. "Jack shot me."

"Why did Jack shoot you?"

What the hell were they talking about? He looked at them in utter confusion while Berran tugged at his hand, trying to get his attention back. What a stupid question. Jack shot him because . . .

Then he remembered and his eyes shot back to Berran. He saw the pink scar on his arm from where he'd bitten himself while reliving the memory of Berran dying. He looked into the face of the little boy beside him and noticed that there was a little scattered pile of scrambled eggs on the floor next to his chair.

Berran was dead.

The Master yanked his hand back to himself with a gasp, watching Berran's face suddenly change to one of hurt surprise. But he could hear him breathe and feel the warmth in his skin. He even felt the chair shift under his weight when he tried to climb up, and pressure against the spoon when Berran closed his mouth around it.

"Do we need to sedate him again?" Jack asked.

"No," the Master answered quickly before anyone else could speak. "No, I'm fine. I just . . . wasn't paying attention."

"Do you want to go back to your room?" the Doctor suggested. "I'll stay with you."

"No, no, really," he insisted, trying his hardest to look away from those deep blue eyes. "I was just listening to the stories and he said he was hungry. I just didn't think about it, that's all."

"Parent autopilot," Wilfred said with a knowing nod of his head. "I could just about change diapers in my sleep when Sylvia was little. As long as you know where you are and what's happening, then everything's fine."

"Yeah. No, I'm fine really." But his hearts were beating a little faster, aching suddenly now that he remembered what happened. "Sorry."

It was hard to get through the rest of the meal. The Doctor found an extra chair and sat down next to him, holding his own plate in his lap as he finished his breakfast. The conversation picked back up after a few minutes of awkward silence, though the Master caught Jack looking at him solemnly several times.

For just a few minutes, he had his son back, and he spent it trying to keep him quiet because more interesting things were happening. Every time he heard Berran's voice talking to him, he just told himself repeatedly that he was dead and, when Berran moved in front of him, he just closed his eyes. He could handle it if he could just remember that Berran was gone.

The Master thought he was doing okay right up until Berran started crying. He leaned back in his seat, looked at the ceiling, tried to listen to the conversation, looked at the Doctor—anything to try to block out the sound. In a moment of weakness, he looked at Berran. His little face had gone all red from crying, and tears were working their way down his round cheeks.

In a split second his own eyes welled with tears that he barely managed to hold back. It felt like a knife had slipped into his chest, hearing those cries and having no choice but to ignore them. The Doctor must have felt the emotion escape him because he soon found fingers entwined with his own. He felt the Doctor trying to come in and he quickly opened his mind to him, letting the warmth seep inside.

When he looked at the Doctor's face he could tell that the Doctor could now see and hear everything that he could. Those brown eyes looked at Berran with sadness for a moment before he felt something pushing inside his mind, and Berran faded away. The warmth continued to spread, tucking away the feelings of guilt and easing the pain.

He felt almost empty by the time the Doctor was done, like there was nothing left once all of that had been taken away. But the Doctor smiled at him and gave his hand a reassuring squeeze, and he felt something re-emerging from the darkness.

Something good.


	41. Donna

The next two days were eye opening. Donna had heard Grandad talk about Harry like he was so fragile and needed to be taken care of, the Doctor speak of him as though his illness made him blameless and he needed to be forgiven, and Jack say that he was dangerous and needed to be controlled. For three days, he suffered and, through that suffering, she saw the truth of it. All three of them were right.

He absolutely was dangerous—the Doctor's battered face was proof enough of that—but she'd seen the confusion in his eyes when he slipped into the madness and could see that he didn't know what he was doing. Finally, when he managed to claw his way back to reality, she could see the shell of him that was left.

Harry reminded her very much of the Doctor in that she saw a man broken to so many pieces it was difficult to see what the original may have looked like. Time and tragedy had worn on them both, and they both tried to hide it behind their energy and smiles, as though they were still shiny and new. The only real difference she saw in their behaviour was that, where the Doctor kept all his stories and secrets safely tucked away in his heart, Harry's laid just below the surface. The only thing that stood between anyone and most of the knowledge of Harry's past was whether or not they were brave enough to ask.

By the third day, the hallucinations were finally beginning to fade. Harry had a very good handle on it by now, but it was wearing him down. He said that he knew none of it was real, but that didn't make it any easier to ignore.

The Doctor didn't want him to be left alone until the attacks passed so they'd all been taking turns spending time with him, even Jack. The Doctor tried to stay with him as often as he could, but there were times when they needed to be away from each other and they seemed to communicate that without words most of the time.

Donna walked into a library that was far too silent for comfort. The Doctor stood up when he saw her come in, bent down to kiss the top of Harry's head, and then began to walk towards her. His eyes glanced off to the side, his lips pursed slightly for a second, and he adjusted his tie as he walked—one of the Doctor's many subconscious rituals when he wanted to shake emotion off of him.

"Thanks," he muttered, touching her shoulder as he walked past.

She waited for the Doctor to close the door behind him before she spoke. "What did you say to him?"

"Nothing."

She walked towards Harry, carefully watching the back of his head to see if she could spot any movement. If Harry was as similar to the Doctor as she thought he was, he might have similar body language.

"Actually nothing or nothing because you just don't want to tell me?"

"Apparently, Jack told the Doctor that he thinks we need to talk. I told Jack a story, see," he began moving about, lifting his shoulders and turning his face towards the side—defensive, as far as she could tell. "He told the Doctor that he should ask me about what happened to my daughter. So he asked, and I told him."

She walked past the wheelchair to take the Doctor's seat and he stared into her face defiantly. His eyes glimmered from the thin layer of water in them and his face looked a little red around the eyes too, but he was stubbornly holding it in.

"The story upset him then?" she asked, sitting down.

"No," he smiled in a strange way and looked away again. "He just sat there, looking all grim, and nodded his head. But he knows me too well. He knows when I don't tell him everything. Like I already said, I didn't say anything."

"Why didn't you just tell him?"

"Ever done something so terrible that you don't even want to admit it to yourself, let alone other people? It's something like that."

She kept her face as immobile as possible, trying not to let any emotion visible. "What did you do?"

He chuckled a little. "Does that work on the Doctor?"

"Sometimes," she answered truthfully. "But usually it's because he wants to talk about it anyway."

He looked her in the eyes, calculating, sizing her up. "I was going to kill you, you know," he said suddenly, mimicking her emotionless face. "They said that you probably don't remember what happened on Christmas, but I was going to kill you. Wilfred too. I put a gun to his head and told the Doctor I would shoot him, and I meant it. You don't have any reason to sit here and try to make me feel better."

She shrugged her shoulders a little. "They say you made the medicine that made me better."

"The Doctor made it."

"The Doctor  _refined_  it," she answered quickly. "I heard the story and I know what happened. You did something good. Whatever else you might have done, you did that."

Harry took a deep breath and said in a very irritated tone, "Look, I'm not some fat girl wanting to be told that I'm just big boned and the boys like a little meat, alright? Save your breath."

"Alright, then stop your fussing!" she snapped back, sounding even more irritated than he did. "I haven't got the patience to deal with you if you're just determined to depress yourself. Grandad says you haven't done a bad thing since the Doctor took you, so smarten up and get over it. Sulking like a child instead of doing something useful certainly isn't going to make anything better."

At first, he looked angry, then simply shocked, and finally she saw the tiniest twitch in the corner of his mouth. She just stared back at him with her jaw set firmly. He just needed a good kick in the pants as far as she was concerned. Harry might listen to Grandad and the Doctor but they were far too nice to him, and she was certain they'd be mortified if they could hear what she just said.

"Donna Noble—"

"Temple-Noble. Married now."

"Would you like to see what I see?"

She shifted a little uncomfortably, unsure of what he meant. "You're not gonna stick something in my head, are you?"

"No. Just a simple connection between our minds. Like what I did before when I let you see me."

"Alright."

It felt different than last time. Before it felt a bit like reaching through an open window and feeling the rain on the other side, but this time it felt like the water was flooding in. A shiver ran down her spine when the sound of laughter filled her ears and she looked down to see a child at her feet.

"He thinks you're funny," Harry said quietly. "Don't worry. I know he's not really here."

She wasn't really sure what to say. The boy certainly  _looked_  real. She slid off her chair and crouched down to get a better look at him. As she looked into those dark blue eyes and reached out to touch the softness of his dark curls, it was incredibly difficult to remember that he wasn't real. She could see her reflection in his eyes, feel his breath on her skin, she could even smell him.

"Is this the same one that was in the kitchen the other day?"

Harry nodded his head slowly. "Yeah."

"He's your son?" Her mouth opened in surprise when the boy touched her face and she felt the heat of his hand and the scrape of his fingernails against her skin.

"He was," he answered quietly. "He was about this age when he died."

Donna took a moment just to watch him in fascination. The way he moved, the way the light hit him and he cast shadows—there was no visual way to tell that he wasn't real. She was stealing a glance at Harry, to see the mixture of sadness and happiness in his eyes, when she heard a baby crying. She looked up just in time to see a slender girl with black lips cradling the screaming baby before the visions suddenly vanished.

"You don't want to see that," Harry said quickly. "Sorry."

The sudden change left a shocking chill in her, like she'd had the wind knocked out of her. "You can still see them?"

"Yeah," he said and then turned his chair away from where the visions stood and towards the door instead, placing a smile on his face. "Let's go."

She stumbled to her feet, still feeling a little strange from the sudden withdrawal of Harry's consciousness. "Go where?"

"To do something useful."

She felt a little rush of excitement as she hurried after him, a bit like when she went to open the TARDIS door after landing. He pushed the wheels of his chair faster and faster until she was running behind him. They passed the Doctor in the hallway and she didn't see Harry's face but she was sure he must have done something, for the Doctor suddenly grinned as he watched them whiz by.

"Crutches, Donna!" Harry called out as they neared the medical room and she darted inside to get them. When she came back out, he was halfway down the hallway and turning a corner, so she ran again. She only caught up to him when he finally stopped outside the big wooden-looking door with all the carvings that she'd seen a thousand times before but never walked through.

"What are we doing?" she asked, panting for breath.

Harry took the crutches from her and pulled himself out of his chair. "Changing the future, or maybe fulfilling a destiny, I don't know," he said with a bit of a shrug. "But you see, I have a theory, and my theory is that you weren't nursing a hangover the other day."

Her eyes widened and she tried to nervously stammer out something that would make sense, but Harry was already moving on.

"The Doctor wouldn't have allowed you to help him unless he was already aware that you were meant to stay behind," he said quickly, punching a few buttons to open the door and leading her inside. "So you didn't change the future because you were already a part of it. You fulfilled a role assigned to you, performed a duty that time had already decided you were meant to do. We're _supposed_ to interfere. Close your mouth."

He was talking so fast that she barely registered the last sentence in time to act. She shut her mouth just as she was sprayed with some kind of a cold mist. No sooner had it stopped than Harry was talking again.

"I know I've been hurt. I know I went back for someone and I got hurt. I know something that happens in my future and yet I didn't feel time shift. My future hasn't been changed by that knowledge because I'm  _supposed_  to know." He looked at her, grinning as the door opened. "And that means I can prepare."

For a second, she thought she was imagining things—that Harry's hallucinations were still slipping into her mind. But, as she blinked into the light and smelled the air and thought about all the amazing things she'd seen on this ship, she realized that it simply had to be real.

"There's a bloody jungle in the TARDIS," she said in disbelief.

"There's a bloody jungle in the TARDS," Harry confirmed happily, as she stepped onto the soft blue fuzz that coated the ground. "The same jungle where I found your cure. I can try to avoid whatever happens to me but, chances are, it will still happen, and maybe my actions now will even _cause_ it to happen. We need something to help us afterwards—to help us heal, to get back, to protect us,  _something_. If I always knew it was coming, I would have done something."

"So we just have to find out what it is?"

He nodded, staring out into the strangely shaped trees. "Exactly."

"Now wait a minute, sonny boy," she said, slightly irritated and still a bit out of breath as she followed him towards a great glass dome. "You think we're going to make some great scientific discovery because you think a future version of yourself did because he thought a future version of himself did?"

"And so on and so forth, yeah."

"How does that even work?"

"It's complicated," he answered simply, holding open the door to the dome. "Don't think too much about it or your little mind might finally give out on you."

"Oi!"

For the next half an hour he drove her nuts, but she had to admit it was kind of fun. Working with Harry wasn't that different from working with the Doctor, except Harry assumed and let her know that he assumed she was stupid and explained everything. It could be annoying but could be helpful as well.

Before she even knew how she had gotten there, he had taught her how to use some of his lab's equipment and had her testing samples for certain characteristics. Some of it came to her a little easier than it should have, and she suspected that it might have been traces of the Doctor in her that was aiding in the work.

"Did he tell you who you went back for?" she asked at one point, when Harry came back in with an armful of different plant stalks. "The Doctor mentioned that to me too, that you went back for someone. Did he tell you who?"

"No," Harry answered simply, dropping the plants on the central table to sort through them. "Did he tell you?"

"Not really. He said that you barely knew him though," she remembered the look of utter confusion in the Doctor's eyes when he told her, shaking his head at the mystery of it. "You weren't friends or anything. He said you were running and suddenly you stopped and looked back, like you'd heard something no one else did, then you just turned around."

Harry nodded his head, looking a little solemn now. "I didn't see the Doctor for very long. He didn't say much to me. Well, I wouldn't  _let_  him say much to me. But he seemed to think whoever it was said something to me that made me go back. Maybe I heard their thoughts, or maybe I just realized something. Who knows?"

"And do you think you will? Even knowing that you're going to get hurt?"

He looked up at her, squinting a little as though he were trying to see her better, then smiled. "I would think that I wouldn't, but . . . obviously I do."

"Why don't you just . . .  _not_  go back?"

"That's a big question."

They worked together all day, frequently visited by various other members of their group. The Doctor came back not long after they'd started and decided to support Harry's new enthusiasm by helping as much as he could. Grandad came and, though he wasn't much help with the actual work, made sure everyone was well supplied with a cup of tea. When Jack joined them, there was surprisingly little hostility—just a few harmless jokes between him and Harry about removing pieces of each other, and he offered to help with the collection of specimens to spare Harry's leg.

She had no idea what time Boris had joined them, but she noticed a moving shadow a few hours into their work. Whenever Harry was taking one of his many Doctor-ordered breaks he would act as a translator, letting Boris communicate with the group and ask questions because he had never been able to before. When Grandad had been thoughtful enough to ask the swarm a question as simple as "how are you?", Boris surprised everyone by reporting that he had finally gotten over his sickness.

"I didn't know you could get sick," the Doctor responded in surprise. "How do you get sick? What kind of sick?"

The shadow shrugged its shoulders and Harry answered, "He doesn't really know. He just knows he's been sick and he's been quiet lately because he wasn't feeling well."

"You feel better now though?" Grandad asked, eyebrows knitted in concern.

Boris confirmed that he was much better, and the conversation carried on. Jack told stories, and the Doctor told stories that he said were better. Eventually, Grandad began telling them children's stories, like the ones she'd heard when she was little.

"You tell Harry that gingerbread one," the Doctor said loudly. "He'll agree with me that it's a terrible story. Do you know how many laws of the Human Empire's Equal Rights Treaty are broken in that story?"

The lab wasn't the biggest space she'd seen in the TARDIS, so it was getting a bit crowded with everyone working with and around all the machines. At one point the Doctor had given up trying to stay out of the way and simply climbed up onto the countertop he was working on and sat on it with crossed legs, hunched over the chemical tests he was performing. Grandad found a chair in the corner and just stayed there, petting some blue animal that had crawled into his lap, and Harry tried to stay at the central examination table.

There was much to be done and nobody really knew what they were doing, but Harry had a well-organized mind, making sure no work went to waste. He even set Grandad up with a pair of heavy-duty gloves to take apart the various plant materials brought in. He knew what everyone was doing at every moment and seemed to be performing a hundred tasks at once.

"You know you could make a living doing this," she said, looking up at him with a smirk.

He looked over at her and she saw the proud gleam in his eye. "I did."

"The youngest and most influential Master of Terraforming on Gallifrey," the Doctor cut in. "He was a legend back home."

"Well, before I became a legend for conquering planets and all that."

"So that's all it is then?" Jack said, looking over the group with an amused grin. "At the end of the day, you and the Doctor were just as boring as the rest of us before you left home."

"We cleaned the house, went to school, got a job, did the shopping, raised the kids," Harry answered without looking up from his work. "That's just life, Jack, and if life were boring then we wouldn't fight so hard for it."


	42. The Doctor

It seemed that the Doctor had felt his cheeks burning far too often since taking the Master onto his ship. The man had an astounding ability to take a situation that should be perfectly normal and turn it into something embarrassing. Wilfred was staring at him and he couldn't quite meet the old man's eyes.

"Are you sure?" Wilf asked the Master, while pointing a finger at the Doctor. "He doesn't exactly look convinced."

"Oh, that's just what he's like, Grandfather," the Master answered casually and gave the Doctor a little push on his shoulder. "Right, Doctor?"

He nodded his head quickly. "Yeah."

He had told the Master that it was okay to tell Wilfred about their relationship, but he hadn't expected the Master to just casually slip that little tidbit of information out during the regular work chat. The three of them were standing around the examination table in the Bio Lab, removing seed pods from a pile of plant stalks and chatting away. Wilfred had only asked where the Master wanted to travel next, and the Master had replied with a nonchalant comment about finding somewhere nice to take the Doctor on a date.

When Wilfred laughed and told him to stop playing about, the Master just grabbed the Doctor by the arms and kissed him right there—and far too enthusiastically in the Doctor's opinion. The Master waited for Wilfred to stare at them in shock for a good minute before mentioning that he was allowed to kiss the Doctor now because they were a couple.

"Well, then that's nice. Good for you, boys," Wilfred said with a smile. "Only took you a few centuries, eh, Harry?"

"Just a few."

He took a few deep breaths and felt the temperature in his face cool down a little. There. That was it. Everybody knew. He didn't have to worry about people walking into the bedroom unannounced or poking around to see why they weren't up yet. It should be easier from now on, really.

"Now, you'll have to forgive me, boys. I know you're adults and everything but I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't ask," Wilfred began, not stopping from his work for a second as he spoke. "You are . . . being careful, aren't you?"

The Doctor’s eyes shot up to Wilfred in near horror at the question, only made worse when the Master replied with: "Careful about what?"

"Let's not talk about this," the Doctor said quickly, pushing a pile of plant stalks towards the Master for him to work on.

"Well, I know how things work these days. You know, it's not like when I was young and that's wonderful really," Wilfred continued. "And there's a lot I don't know about your species, Harry, but I do not that it's possible for two men—well, any two  _people_  really—to, well . . . you know, you two could—"

The Doctor felt his cheeks burning again. He really, really wished that the Master might have waited to have this conversation when he and Wilf were alone.

"Oh, that's no problem. I assume you're asking about contraception, right?" the Master answered Wilfred with perfect calm, seemingly not embarrassed at all. "It's actually really interesting how it works—"

"You don't need to give him a lesson!" the Doctor interrupted quickly. "I gave the man a book. He has books for those sorts of questions."

"I don't see why you think it matters." The Master rolled his eyes. "Either way, he's going to learn about it, so I may as well just tell him and save him the time and bother of reading those dusty old tomes. Now can you be a grown up for a minute so that we can have a scientific discussion here?"

"Maybe he's right, Harry. I've got that book, and I'm sure you both know what you're doing—"

"No, no, it only takes a second to explain. I was going to say that it would be quite interesting for you as human because of how differently we've evolved. If you take a male and a female of our species then it  _is_  possible for them to have what you call 'accidents', the same way humans do, but not us."

"But I thought you could have children naturally too?" Wilfred asked.

"Oh, we can, but it has to be a conscious decision. See, neither of us is carrying any eggs at the moment, but it is possible to change that. The Doctor's told you about regeneration, yes?"

The Doctor stayed stubbornly silent, refusing to look at Wilfred or the Master in the face. He hated it that the most he could about this would be to simply leave the room, but all that meant was that he would have no idea what Wilfred was told.

"Yeah, that's when you go all glowy and then grow a new body."

"Well, we basically do that, but only on a cellular level, and create an egg. It takes a bit of effort, so it can't really happen by mistake."

"But that's amazing!" Wilfred said, sounding genuinely impressed.

"I always thought so. And see, Doctor? That just saved him forty-five minutes."

"Alright, now he knows," the Doctor said quickly. "Can we get back to work now?"

"But you'll be having some kids right away. Right, Doctor?"

" _What_?"

"Well, I'm not getting any younger you know, and Donna's not having any for a while. Hop to it!"

"Wha—I—well, no, I . . ." He stared at Wilf in complete shock, who was staring back at him with a completely serious face. He stammered over words that simply wouldn't come because he didn't even know what he could say.

The Master snickered beside him and Wilfred's face broke into a wide grin. "Oh, you ruined it, Harry! I had him going!"

The Doctor flung his hand to the side and smacked the Master hard on the arm. "You are such a bad influence!"

"Oi, I didn't do it! He did that all on his own."

The Doctor had never quite understood the human obsession with sharing everything about relationships. They huddled together and asked about every detail of a first date, or gathered in flocks to complain about each other's partners, and then they would travel all the way around the world to simply hear a few promises and witness the signing of a contract. They wrote 'Just Married' on their cars and wore wedding rings so that random strangers would know all about it. There was no privacy in human relationships at all.

The Master had always been better at embracing that part of humanity. He danced and flirted and kissed his wife as though they were always alone, and he never went a day without wearing his wedding ring, even towards the end.

Knowing humans as well as he did, and especially knowing Wilfred, the Doctor wasn't surprised when they were asked for a photo. As expected, the Master was happy to oblige, even if the Doctor was not.

Wilfred pulled Donna's camera out of his pocket and held it up. "Oh, look at him red faced and sulking. Make him smile, Harry!"

Before he could do anything, the Master had grabbed his arm tightly, planted a kiss on his cheek, and a surge of happiness shot from the Master's mind into his own. He saw images from their night at the Disney park, trying on silly hats and dancing and seeing his past self looking clueless and perfectly happy. The camera flashed and he snapped back to the present, annoyed to see how very pleased with himself the Master looked.

"Oh, that's lovely!" Wilf said happily. "Look, Doctor!"

"Don't give him the camera or he'll delete it."

Wilf nodded very gravely and slipped the camera back in his pocket. "I'll show you when I get it printed then. Good thing you've got your face back in order though, I'll say that much."

He'd decided to risk taking his own accelerator the day before as the frequent reminder his bruises acted as caused too much distress for the Master. He'd seen those brown eyes turn toward him with concern, the Master would ask where the bruises came from, and the way his eyes changed when he was told that he caused it was enough to make up the Doctor's mind. There were three other people on board to take care of the Master while he rested and healed.

The Master finally seemed stable enough to have an accelerator without posing a danger to himself or others that day, so the Doctor had decided to let him have it that evening.

"Right then," the Master said with a yawn and began removing seed pods again. "I wouldn't mind going shopping. Can we go shopping?"

"Maybe after you've healed," the Doctor answered. "What do you want to go shopping for?"

"Shoes, clothes, I don't know. Anything."

"Don't say that to Donna," Wilf warned. "You'll never get home."

The Doctor scrunched his face up and looked at his partner with distaste. "Are you saying you want to shop for fun?"

"No, I just want to shop for things. Everything I've got belongs to you—even the clothes I wear are yours really. I want some of my own things."

"He wants to nest," Wilfred said wisely. "Like all women do."

"Watch it, Grandfather."

And so it carried on, with the Master and Wilf taking turns between picking on each other and picking on him. He joined in sometimes, or else sat and suffered silently through it when the Master took it a step too far.

They found Donna and Jack in the kitchen at dinner time, seemingly deep into a private conversation from the sombre looks on their faces. They cheered up a bit with some chatter, and Donna fired off about a thousand questions once it had been mentioned that Wilfred now knew about his and the Master's relationship. From there it was just one inappropriate joke or story after another.

They discussed a shopping trip and Donna immediately jumped on board. She promised the Master that she would help him find suitable clothing, but he didn't seem thrilled with the thought, so Jack offered instead. It was eventually decided that everyone would just stay together and that the Master would ask for opinions if he wanted them.

The time simply raced by, but the Doctor found himself feeling a little tired by the end of the day. He really enjoyed having so many of his friends around him but he wasn't quite used to needing to be so social just yet. As much as he loved their company, he was thankful when people began saying goodnight.

After a bit of whining and a little arguing, he agreed to let the Master sleep in his bed, but under the extremely strict condition that there was absolutely no sex. He had to help the Master hobble across the room, kicking piles of clothes and chunks of scrap metal aside whilst listening to complaints about the terrible mess his room was in.

It wasn't until the Master was actually nestled under the blankets that the Doctor gave him the accelerator. He would sleep well that night and probably well into the morning as the little pill worked its magic but, when he woke, his leg would be healed. The Doctor settled in next to him, fully clothed in pyjamas and wearing his glasses so that he could stay up and read for a bit, and they talked for a little while. They laughed about Wilfred's reaction and the Master told him about the sudden change in behaviour from Jack over the past couple of days—it was hard to know what he was up to, but the Doctor hoped that it was all for the best.

After a little while the conversation dwindled away into two-word comments and yawns so the Doctor thought it would be safe to grab the book from his nightstand. He was uncomfortably aware of the Master staring at him all the while but was determined not to strike up another conversation. The Master needed to sleep and heal and he refused to let himself be tricked into allowing him to do anything else.

"Doctor," the Master finally said after a long silence. "I love you."

He already knew that, but it was different to hear the Master say it without a hint of sarcasm in his voice or without a joke attached to it somehow. " . . . What?"

"I said I love you. And I do."

"Well, I . . . that's—I mean, I really—"

"You don't have to say it back," the Master said with an amused grin on his face. "I know you wouldn't mean it, not yet anyway. That's okay. One of us has to feel it first."

"Well, it's . . ." He felt a bit aflutter really, despite being so old it was still rather thrilling to hear someone say such a thing. "That's wonderful, Harry. Thank you."

The Master's grin turned to an odd sort of smile. "You called me Harry."

"I did?"

"You did," the Master confirmed. "You never call me Harry. I like it though."

He tried to think of something to say but couldn't. Then he tried to move on from the moment but still couldn't. His stomach felt like it was turning flips and his hearts were beating away with happiness. He felt young all of a sudden—young and foolish and naïve to how badly a broken heart could hurt. He pretended to read his book, but the words didn't make any sense. All he could think about was the person who was lying next to him and the words he'd just heard.

"Alright," he said suddenly, tossing his book aside in defeat and moving to get up from his space on the bed. "Take your pants off."

The Master looked up at him in confusion, but was obeying just the same. "You said we couldn't do that."

"Yeah, well, I can't just let you say something like that you love me and not do anything about it," the Doctor answered almost grumpily. "Besides, I said no sex and that's not what we're going to do."

The Master tossed his shorts off of the bed and grinned at him. "So if I can't get something  _out_  of your mouth, I get to put something  _in_  your mouth? Is that it?"

The Doctor raised an eyebrow at him. "You got a problem with that?"

"No, no! By all means," the Master answered quickly. "I was just thinking I'll have to say that I love you more often."


	43. Wilfred

The Doctor had been reluctant to let anyone in his room, but he didn't have much choice now. He had given Harry the accelerator for his leg but then let him sleep in the Doctor's bed, and he couldn't possibly expect to keep everyone away and leave Harry without supervision the entire time he was healing. Wilfred didn't really understand why the Doctor had such an aversion to letting anyone in until the door finally opened.

The first time he had entered the TARDIS, he was a little surprised by how shabby some of it looked. It was tidy for the most part but it seemed like it hadn't had a good scrub-down in a very long time, covered in the dust and grime of years. He simply supposed that a man like the Doctor probably just didn't have time to break out the feather duster or wash bucket and figured that it was none of his business anyway.

But Wilfred simply couldn't see the state of the Doctor's room and not do anything about it.

"If Harry gets up to use the bathroom or something he'll break his neck."

When the Doctor tried to argue against it, Wilf simply made his voice stern and reminded him that Harry was sick, wasn't always aware of his surroundings, and that any health facility would consider a room in such a state to be a hazard and completely unacceptable for housing a patient.

It was hard to know what was what when so much of it looked completely alien, but he did his best. While the Doctor picked up clothes and old bedding to go in the wash, Wilfred moved about with a plastic bag to collect any garbage scattered about the strange room.

He was surprised by the amount of letters he found and, while they all seemed to have been discarded and forgotten, not a single one of them had found their way to the floor. There were letters written with such a beautiful hand that just a glance showed how much love had gone into the words, letters scrawled out in a terrible hurry, and letters written in the wonky and backwards writing of small children. Some of them had begun to turn yellow with age, the ink faded and the edges worn from being held so much, while others looked brand new. He found several written in the circular patterns of the Doctor's homeworld, and a few in which he saw the symbols that he learned from his books to mean "The Master" where a signature would normally go.

Harry had told him not long ago that, while he and the Doctor may have been enemies for so many years, he always felt that a part of them had remained friends through all of that. He said that sometimes things got a little too out of control or a little too difficult to handle and, even though they were at war with one another, he felt like the Doctor was the only one he wanted to see or speak to. He supposed the letters must have been the evidence to that testimony. He carefully folded each letter he found and returned it to its envelope, forming a pile on one of the Doctor's desks to make sure that none were accidentally thrown away.

So many questions popped into his head as he gathered things up. He wanted to ask about where all the letters had come from, and he wanted to know about the old letters from Harry. He wanted to ask about the children's toys he found, or the beautiful necklace that lay perfectly untouched in its box, or the blue jacket that was far too small for a man as tall as the Doctor to wear. He found a large frame for a painting under one of the desks, but the painting appeared to have been torn out. He found a small box with a lock of red hair inside, a crown that looked to be made with real gold and diamonds, the handle of a broken sword, a black and white photograph of a beautiful Chinese woman standing in a garden—so many wondrous things that he was too afraid to ask about.

The only thing he did think was a safe question to ask was why all the mirrors had been covered up, but the Doctor didn't even answer that. "No reason," the Doctor answered, glancing around at the covered mirrors. "We can take all of those down."

When he found the dagger from Godforge, he put it on the bedside table and reminded the Doctor of what he supposed to do with it.

Whenever Harry woke up, Wilfred made sure to just keep tidying up to let the Doctor have a moment with him first. He would wait until the Doctor either left his side or he was called over before approaching the bedside to talk. Despite feeling tired and groggy from the accelerator, Harry seemed to be doing alright. He had a few minor slip-ups in his memory, but he was able to quickly accept any corrections given, and he was able to remember where he was and why.

Wilfred watched the Doctor tending to Harry from the corner of his eye while he continued tidying up. Now that he was aware of the blossoming relationship between the two of them, he felt a bit stupid for not seeing it earlier. When he remembered his first days into this adventure, even after the Doctor had caught up on his sleep and calmed down, the Doctor's behaviour had been drastically different. It had been uncomfortable and full of tension, and the Doctor acted more like someone handling a wild animal than a taking care of a friend. He was so relaxed with Harry now and gentle with him, and oh, how much he smiled these days! He was almost an entirely new man.

Wilf still had the camera in his pocket and decided that right now was the perfect time to take it out and snap a picture. The Doctor was sitting on the edge of the bed, holding Harry's hand while he spoke to him, and Harry just smiled peacefully. The moment the shutter clicked the Doctor's head whirled around and Wilfred simply shrugged his shoulders.

"You might not like having your picture taken, Doctor, but you'll be glad for it one day."

It took another two hours to get the room properly cleaned, after which he went with Donna through the many storage rooms in the TARDIS in search of frames for all the old photos he'd found. He found a stunning silver box covered with beautiful shapes made out of gold that would suit for keeping all of the Doctor's old letters and they got Jack to carry an enormous wooden chest they picked out for holding all the other strange objects that he kept.

When Harry woke up, he laughed and said that he must be imagining things again because he could actually see the floor of the room, and the Doctor admitted that he'd been shamed into cleaning it. An inspection of the leg proved that it had healed up rather nicely and Harry was allowed to go in the shower without supervision.

Things went smoothly for a long time after that. Harry seemed better every day and the Doctor was slowly becoming accustomed to having his picture taken and being kissed when other people were in the room without his face glowing red. Harry and Jack still didn't like each other but most of the tension seemed to have gone and, at times, it seemed that they were able to put their differences aside and behave almost like friends.

They went on the shopping trip that Harry had asked for and got him a new wardrobe—mostly suits but he did end up getting himself some more casual jeans and T-shirts. Jack and Donna helped him through the process as they had promised, even when it wasn't wanted and, though the Doctor found a brand new fedora that looked just like the old one, Harry stubbornly refused to give up the hat he’d adopted as his own.

They travelled to distant worlds for nothing more than the sake of fun and everyone made sure to watch Harry for signs of exhaustion now. He had some attacks, some of which were terrible, but he was getting better at handling them and faster at recovering from them. No one got hurt.

They worked in the lab with Harry often and he seemed to be getting more and more excited over the things he was finding. Wilfred would usually join him for a swim in the pool at the end of a work day and eventually everyone else started coming along too. They'd also made a habit of smuggling Lily out of the lab and, when the Doctor caught them, Harry simply argued and demanded until the Doctor finally gave in, deciding that one more little creature running around the TARDIS wouldn't make a difference anyway.

There was one day when Jack and Harry finally lost their tempers with each other and got into a fist fight. Wilfred did his best to keep the Doctor and Donna back as they bellowed and roared at the two men to stop. The fight only lasted about two minutes before the strangest thing happened—Jack started laughing. Jack laughed when Harry hit him, then Harry laughed when Jack hit him back. The punches grew weaker and they laughed harder until they were finally just using each other to hold themselves up as they laughed.

They chuckled out a few insults as they caught their breath. Wilfred stood with the Doctor and Donna, staring in utter bewilderment as the two shook hands and Jack declared that he needed a drink. Harry pulled a handkerchief from his pocket to hold against his bleeding nose and agreed.

Other than a couple of bruises and a little bit of blood, there was no real harm done, but the Doctor was so furious with them both that he barely even looked at them for almost two days. Neither Harry nor Jack were very happy with how upset the Doctor was, but they both stood firmly by the idea that the fight had been good for them.

And finally, a month after Donna joined them on the TARDIS, she asked about going home.

"I don't mean forever," she said quickly when she saw the smile on the Doctor's face vanish. "It's just that I'm supposed to be a wife to somebody now. I can't be gone for a few hours and come back looking a year older. I'm supposed to be going on my honeymoon in a week . . . well, three weeks ago now, really."

"No, of course," the Doctor answered, nodding his head. "Of course. And, uh . . . I suppose you'll want to go too, Wilfred?"

Wilf saw Harry's eyes shoot up and he tried his hardest not to look straight at him. "I should, really . . . just for a little bit. I mean, people would start to wonder where I'd gone if she went back without me."

"She can tell everyone you went on holiday," Harry said quickly. "She's just won the lottery, hasn't she? Donna, just tell people you sent him on a holiday. Greece, or something. Yeah, say you bought him a holiday in Greece."

Donna rolled her eyes and put her hands on her hips. "Well, I'll miss you too, mate. Never mind that I'm going anywhere just as long as I don't take my grandad with me!"

"You'll be fine!" Harry answered with an irritated wave of his hand. "You're still young."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Donna answered with a scowl.

"Harry," Wilfred stepped in, frowning a little. "Do you think I'll die?"

Harry stared at him for a long moment, his mouth trying to form words that he couldn't seem to get out until the Doctor stepped in for him. "Harry's not used to caring for humans, really. The people he's been attached to in the past have been Time Lords or species that he chose  _because_  they're sturdy. You're important to us, Wilfred, so it's only natural that he should worry."

"But I'm not that old!" Wilfred laughed a little in disbelief.

"I know that," the Doctor answered softly. "But being a Time Lord means that far too often we say goodbye to people without knowing it'll be the last time. Call it separation anxiety."

Wilfred looked straight at Harry now, seeing the distress that he was failing to hide. "I'll come back, boys," he said with a kind smile. "I'll tell you what. You two take some time to yourselves—just a couple of days. Then you come back for us in December, yeah? We'll all have a lovely Christmas together and then we'll go flying off again. It'll feel like we just went home for the weekend."

"That's several months for you," Harry answered quietly.

"I think this old body will last more than a few months."

It took a little more talking before he felt Harry was comfortable enough with the idea and they began to make arrangements. Wilfred insisted that Jack come and stay with him while he was away, to give Harry and the Doctor some time alone, and suddenly they were all packing.

When they were ready to leave, Harry handed Wilfred and Donna each a small vial with a golden liquid inside. He explained to them that it worked a bit like an accelerator that it would take care of any illnesses or bodily damage they might not know about or had acquired over the years. They might feel like they had a stomach bug for a day or two, but it would make sure they were in good health. They both waited for an approving nod from the Doctor before drinking it.

They flew through time and space and, when the doors opened, they were looking out into the park, the very same hour they had left in. Wilfred made sure to give both the boys a good strong hug, promising that he would do his best not to age too much while they were gone. Then Donna hugged them both and threatened bodily harm if they didn't come back at the agreed time. Jack didn't hug Harry, but he shook his hand and politely told him to take care.

"I'll put together a photo album for you two, eh? It can be your Christmas present," Wilfred said, taking the camera out of his pocket again. "One more, with everyone."

He found a ledge that was high enough to sit the camera on and Donna helped him set the timer. Wilfred tried his best to stretch his arms around everyone, though his arms weren't quite long enough, and the camera flashed. Then that was it. It was time to go.

Jack picked up most of the bags on his own and made his way to the door with Donna on his heels. Wilfred took a last look at the two Time Lords before stepping outside and felt terrible at the look of poorly hidden misery on Harry's face. But he reminded himself that Harry had the Doctor to look after him now and that the wait would be as long or short as they chose.

They would be okay.

"See you at Christmas then," he said with a smile.

The Doctor nodded and Harry tried his best to smile. "See you at Christmas, Grandfather."


	44. The Doctor

When the doors closed, the Doctor was already giving the TARDIS new instructions. He watched Harry from the corner of his eye, watched him flexing his fingers and taking deep breaths. He felt bad for him but, at the same time, had to smile. The great and powerful Master had come to love a human so much that he didn't know how to handle it.

"Are you going to survive?" the Doctor asked playfully.

"Shut up," Harry answered quickly, sounding annoyed. "Let's just go."

"You know he'll be okay."

"You don't know that. No one's watching the Earth right now. You and I won't be there for months and even Torchwood is gone. What if something invades? Or some kind of pathogen makes it through the atmosphere?" Harry was pacing now, chewing the nail of his thumb. "Anything could happen. Who's left to save them?"

"Jack's there."

"A man who can't die doesn't put enough value on life. Jack gets people killed."

"Look, the world's not going to end just because we're on holiday."

"What do you mean  _we're_  on holiday? We're not going on holiday," Harry looked up at him with a scowl. "We're going to December and meeting up with them."

The Doctor shook his head. "Not right now, we're not."

"Yes, we are."

Harry stepped forward, his hand reaching out for the console and the Doctor quickly stepped in his way. "Actually, we're not, but thanks for the suggestion. Now if you don't mind, you can stand over there while I fly the ship."

"I don't know what you—"

"So I was thinking either Rome in the first century or Calliope Palm in the thirty-second. What do you think?"

"Or neither of those and—"

"You're right. What about Kanthret's eighth moon? Maybe during the age of Empress Alithia? They had the best theatre in that time. Oh,  _The Widow's Web_  is one of my all-time favourites!"

He stopped and watched Harry, thoroughly amused by the exasperated expression on his face. Of course, the decision to take Wilfred home had been rather sudden but it was simply necessary that Harry learn to deal with these things. One day really would be the last time they would see each other and Harry needed to know that he could still function without his Grandfather to hold his hand.

Harry crossed his arms defiantly. "What are you talking about?"

The Doctor crossed his arms in return and smirked. "I'm talking about taking you on a date."

". . . A date?"

"Yes," he answered slowly. "You know, a date. I make sure I do a decent job of shaving, put on a clean suit, take you for a ride in my so very impressive vehicle, get nervous when our hands accidentally touch, make slightly awkward chit chat over a lovely dinner, drink just enough to make it not so awkward, dance a little, maybe catch a show, and then I, uh . . . take you home, kiss you goodnight, and, um . . ." he ruffed his hair with his hand and, despite all these words coming out smoothly in his head, stammered over the last bit. "Probably . . . start taking your clothes off."

Harry stared at him skeptically for a moment but then a hint of a smile appeared at the corner of his mouth. "You think I would let you take my clothes off on the first date?"

"Well, I did take you to Disneyplanet so it's not really the first date, is it?" he answered quickly.

"Hmm, not if other people were there. It doesn't count as a date if you bring your friends along. Especially Jack. You can't bring  _Jack_  and call it a date."

"Alright, you've got me there," he grinned, feeling the waves of distress in the air beginning to fade away. "But what about the first time I took you there? We were alone then so that one counts."

"No, because you didn't do anything even remotely date-like."

"I held your hand."

"I held  _your_  hand."

He scoffed and waved his hand dismissively. "Still counts."

"No, it doesn't," Harry shook his head stubbornly. "Not according to your criteria anyway. The dinner was less of a dinner and more like packets of crisps and cups of dyed liquid sugar but, even if we let that slide, we never danced, you never kissed me goodnight, and you certainly never tried to take my clothes off."

"Not that you remember anyway." He waited for Harry to raise a confused eyebrow before adding in a scandalous whisper, "There was more than dye and sugar in your drink."

"I think I need to remember it in order for it to count."

"Just ask me for the moon why don't you. Can I get you a horse-drawn carriage and a string quartet while I'm at it?" He sighed heavily and turned back to the controls, punching in the last needed commands. "Fine then. This will be our first date."

"Actually . . . I think you're supposed to ask me out first. I mean, how am I supposed to know I'm going on a date if you don't ask me first?"

The TARDIS launched, hurling them through all of space in time, wailing as she did so. The Doctor held onto the console and peered around the central pillar at the man holding on to the other side, thinking to himself that this was exactly how it should have been all along. When the movement finally stopped he quickly slipped across to Harry's side of the console, straightened his tie, and tried to make his face look as serious as possible.

"Excuse me," he said in his noblest of voices and reaching out for a handshake. "Hi, I'm the Doctor."

Harry grinned and shook his hand. "Nice to meet you, Doctor. I'm Harry."

"I couldn't help but notice you standing over here all by yourself and I just couldn't pass up the chance to talk to someone who is so, if you don't mind my saying so, _strikingly_ handsome." He gave his best charming smile—the one that he had known to melt the hearts of men, women, and other variations of gender amongst many species over the course of centuries. "And thought maybe you would like to go to dinner?"

"Are you asking me on a date, Doctor?"

"Why, yes, I believe I am."

Harry managed to suppress his grin just enough to nod and answer stiffly, "I suppose I've got nothing else to do this evening."

"Meet back here in fifteen minutes?"

"What are you, an animal?" Harry answered with a shake of his head. "I'll meet you in an hour."

"Ohh, high maintenance. Red flags already, my friend." He clucked his tongue as Harry began walking towards the door. "An hour then. And don't you dare wear that stupid hat!"

Harry turned back and made a face at him. "I'll wear whatever I like," he said before going through the door.

He didn't wear the hat, though he was ten minutes late. Harry walked into the control room sporting one of his new black suits, again abandoning the jacket and simply wearing the vest instead. He had also chosen a black tie to go with his deep red shirt, a colour the Doctor hadn't really seen him wear yet in his newest body, though he did think it suited him well.

"Had to repaint your nails, did you?" the Doctor asked, making a show of pulling out a pocket watch to check the time. He'd gone with his brown suit, thinking it looked a little more grown up, but now thought that maybe he ought to have gotten something new in case Harry thought he was being lazy by wearing something he wore so often. Did he look shabby next to him?

"Some people have more to their grooming routine than running their hands through their hair repeatedly and splashing a little water on their face," Harry answered, attaching his shining silver cufflinks as he spoke. "You should try it sometime."

"I don't know. Sounds like an awful lot of work for someone who prefers to stay fully clothed on a first date." He waited for the smile to tug at the corner of Harry's mouth before approaching him and offering his arm. "Master Mott."

Harry hooked his arm through the Doctor's and smirked. "Doctor Noble."

"Why am I a Noble?"

"Because you are. It suits you better."

He might have tried to turn it into some sort of playful debate, demanding a properly constructed argument for naming him a Noble instead of a Mott, but he decided against it as he was supposed to be distracting Harry from thinking about Wilfred. He needed him to just focus on the two of them for now, and let Wilfred exist elsewhere for a while. So they walked together to the TARDIS doors and the Doctor pushed them open, revealing a portal to the world beyond.

The Doctor could tell that Harry didn't want to look too impressed but, for the briefest second, he saw those brown eyes light up. Littand was one of the least hospitable planets in the universe, and yet it flourished and crawled with more life than most. Everything about the planet was an evolutionary miracle, a whole world alive with creatures because they simply would _not_ to give in to the darkness—they absolutely refused to die.

Even when he was just the boy from the soil and the red fields, Harry had been fascinated with the tenacity of life itself. Becoming a terraforming master and a dedicated student to the process of evolution had not surprised anyone who truly knew him. It was easy to see in his eyes when he looked upon the strangely shaped trees in the Bio Lab, or observed Lily running about, or at that very moment, as he looked out at the world of Littand—it was so beautiful to him.

"I always said I'd come here," Harry said quietly.

"You know where we are then?"

"How can I not? You can just taste it in the air," Harry answered with a nod. "The simple stubbornness. The planet that never dies. It's wonderful."

"I thought you'd like it," the Doctor said with a happy grin, pleased with the reaction. "Shall we?"

The planet orbited so closely to its sun that it simply scorched from the heat of the day, though there was also a black hole not far off, stealing all the heat away. The moment a side of the planet turned away from the face of the sun, the temperature plummeted at an amazing rate. It was said that Littand should have been caught up in the gravitational pull and sucked into the black hole millions of years ago but the planet, like the life it nurtured, simply refused to go.

The Doctor had been sure to land them during the night, certain that Harry would not last long in the heat of the day. The ground was covered with a thick frost and the plants all around them had closed up their beautiful decorations and curled all their limbs inward, coating themselves in a sap that became as hard as rock when frozen. They would be protected through the cold night and the sap would simply melt away when the sun rose, letting them bloom as brightly as ever.

When they turned their eyes skyward, they could see the beautiful swirls of light surrounding a circle of the darkest black. The void took in everything—the light, the heat, and any matter that came too close, except the planet. Littand dug its heels in and remained just barely beyond the reach of those hungry fingers.

"There's a museum nearby, just beyond this park," the Doctor said, pointing to a light in the distance. "Dedicated to the life of this planet. I thought we could start there."

Harry nodded his head quickly and allowed himself to be led. They found the museum without trouble and the Doctor thought it was a safe guess that, judging by the smile on his face and the unusual silence, Harry was pleased beyond words. The more they looked at, the more excited he became and he began talking about the wondrous abilities of life itself. Harry even dared to enter some of the rooms that simulated the Littanian day so that he could see how the plant and animal behaviour differed in the heat and light.

There was actually a point where he got so deep into the information he was discussing that even the Doctor didn't know what he was talking about anymore. He did what he figured he was supposed to do on a date—smile, nod, and slip in comments of agreement or interest occasionally.

The museum itself was fascinating, but it was far more entertaining to see Harry respond to it. There was something so innocent about someone experiencing a thrill from learning and seeing something new and he supposed that it was one of his favourite things about taking on companions. He'd almost forgotten that even old men like themselves could still be enchanted with the universe. It seemed his age meant that he always needed someone to remind him why it was all so magical, but Harry could look at a life raging against the dying of the light and see the magic all on his own.

They spent much longer in the museum than the Doctor had originally planned, two hours longer in fact. It was only through the extremely audible growling of his stomach that he finally managed to get Harry to leave. They could always come back, he reminded Harry. They would come back another day.

The restaurant they went to featured Cannibal Jinieals as its crowd-pleasing delicacy—an animal that grew and painlessly shed meat the way other animals shed hair, for their young to feed on as if it were milk. There were several to choose from, all fed on different diets to achieve different flavours and, of course, the older the animal the juicier and more expensive its meat. They could choose one specific animal to eat from and come back in several years to eat from the same one and, all the while, the Jinieal lived a life of luxury as a sacred animal.

"They actually have their names on the menu," Harry said in surprise, leaning forward to point it out on the page and reading it out. "Pinnu is a fifty-seven year old Jinieal and is fed primarily with Rooka leaves and hidrax, giving the meat an exotic and unique blended flavour that oozes with minty juices. Oh, and look at this, Nai is twenty-six years old and fed with kari sap and padri roots—"

"Shame she's not older, because that actually sounds good."

"Twenty-six isn't bad," Harry answered with a shrug. "Besides, they say the young ones aren't as juicy, but they've got a bit more kick to them. I might actually order some of little Junnop here. Look at her picture; that's a winner right there."

While the food was delicious and the music of the restaurant was almost hypnotic, the wine was certainly wanting. Neither of them drank very much of it because it tasted suspiciously like it contained, in Harry's own words, sweat from the back of a male, middle-aged, balding tax agent of Turkish decent. The Doctor couldn't honestly say that he would know what that tasted like, but he quickly agreed and pushed his glass to the side of the table where it was forgotten. They tried something called Gwuatch instead that turned out to have a lovely, mild flavour that reminded him a bit of raspberry jam and hazelnuts.

Once the scrap remains of their meal, the disgusting wine, and the final drops of the Gwuatch had been cleared away, there was nothing left to do but to brave the dance floor. It was certainly more formal here than it had been at the last place they danced and most of the dancers seemed to be performing some very sophisticated steps, but the Doctor tried not to think too much about it. They might not be familiar with the local moves, but both he and Harry knew how to dance well enough, he was sure.

It was actually a little more relaxing this time around. He wasn't thinking about where Donna or Wilfred were in the back of his mind, he wasn't worrying if Jack had gotten himself into trouble, and he wasn't quietly wondering whether or not things were moving too fast. They simply danced and enjoyed each other, sometimes chatting a little and sometimes not saying anything at all. The other dancers moving around them may as well have been in another dimension he paid so little attention to them, and Harry's eyes didn't stray either.

Still feeling a little bit of a buzz from the Gwuatch, they took a long stroll through the park in which the TARDIS landed. Harry talked some more about the museum and the Doctor shared his fascination with the black hole hovering in the sky above them. They talked about the upcoming Christmas and decided that they ought to go shopping for gifts before going there and then spoke about the other places they would go.

When they finally returned to the great blue box, standing amongst a world of flowers sleeping within ice and an eye of darkness surrounded by fantastic light above them, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to take Harry's hand and kiss him. He held on, thinking of how easily he had let moments like this slip away when he was with Rose or anyone else that mattered, and decided firmly that he would embrace every second of this night. Harry didn't complain, and just kept kissing him as the snow began to drift around them.

"Let's go inside," Harry suggested after a couple of minutes and reached for the TARDIS door.

"I like it out here," the Doctor answered quickly.

"Well, yes, it's lovely and everything," he said, giving the Doctor a gentle push towards the TARDIS. "But according to your own schedule, Doctor, I think this is the part of the evening where you're supposed to try and take my clothes off."

He grinned and allowed himself to get pushed into the doorway. "But you said you don't do that on a first date."

"I didn't  _actually_  say that I don't," Harry corrected, giving him another push so that he could get inside too. "Besides, there's no point in pretending I'm a good boy. We both know I'm easy."


	45. The Doctor

It had all gone by in a blink. First it was just a date, then it was taking some extra time to learn about Littand, then it was Christmas shopping, then it was having a quick look at that planet they heard about while shopping and, before either of them knew it, it had been weeks.

There had been days where they pushed themselves—Harry's curiosity was so great that he dared to explore Littand during the day, even if it was only for a short time—which would result in days of nothing but rest. Even on those days, when they did nothing but lay in bed and sleep or sit in the library and read, they were so content that neither of them ever thought about leaving. It had been a great relief to the Doctor to discover that being with Harry was just as enjoyable when they were alone and had nothing to do.

They travelled to the dawn of Roman civilization, to 1603 so the Doctor could say a long overdue goodbye, and to random planets just to see what they were. They worked in the lab until they both fell asleep, took some time to make sure the TARDIS was clean in preparation for Wilfred's return, and took each other on a couple more dates.

Now, as they prepared to return to Earth, the Doctor found it hard to believe that so much time had passed. Had it really been five weeks without any of his friends on the ship? Had they really survived five weeks with no one to pull them apart if they fought? More still, he found himself wishing they could spend more time before going to meet the others, but Harry had finally begun to get impatient.

He had done surprisingly well, really. The Doctor had expected a bit more fight out of him than he got, but Harry seemed happy. It took three weeks before he began to mention that the TARDIS seemed too quiet at times, four weeks to properly say he missed Wilfred, and five weeks for him to actually break.

He was having an off day, seeing the ghosts of his past living beside him as though they breathed just as he did, but he was handling it well. Or at least he had been. The Doctor remembered seeing the look of pure shock on Harry's face when he walked in the room. His eyes went wide and he actually took a couple of steps back, stammering for a few seconds before he got any sensible words out.

"Is he dead?"

The Doctor's eyes automatically scanned the room, even though he knew there would be no one there. "Who?"

"He can't be here. I know he can't," Harry's voice raised in volume rapidly. "Is he dead and I've forgotten? Doctor, am I seeing him because he's dead!?"

Harry's eyes were looking at something too high to be a child, he seemed aware of exactly who the Doctor was, so the Doctor could only conclude that he had to be talking about Wilfred. To the best of his knowledge, Harry had never connected with any other adult males strongly enough to create that kind of response.

It took a few minutes to calm him down and convince him that Wilfred had not died. With some time, carefully chosen words, and a little bit of telepathic soothing, Harry relaxed and remembered that Wilfred was safe at home.

After that, the Doctor decided that it was time to go back. They dug out the Christmas presents they had bought weeks before, made sure they looked presentable, and took the TARDIS back to Earth on the afternoon of Christmas Eve.

When they stepped out into the chilled air, the Doctor was happy to see a light dusting of snow on the ground. It was actively melting but, if it had already snowed, he was hopeful that it might snow again. Harry smoothed down his vest, wearing his brown suit that day, and carefully placed the worn and ancient fedora on his head.

"Finally, this bloody planet is a half decent temperature."

"You know Wilf is going to want to take pictures," the Doctor answered with a scowl. "Do you really want the memories of this day to feature you wearing that hat?"

"It's a good hat."

"It's an  _old_  hat."

"Yes, but, if I threw away things just because they were old, I wouldn't have you around now, would I?" Harry slid his hand into the Doctor's. "Be thankful I'm so sentimental."

It seemed a little quiet considering it was Christmas Eve. He only saw one other person in the park and, once they reached the streets, the houses did not seem to be full of noisy families gathering together. Driveways held only one car, sidewalks lay empty and seemingly forgotten, and the air was eerily still. A glance at Harry proved that he was noticing the same thing, his brows very slightly pulling together as he looked around.

"Doctor!"

He didn't need to look to know who it was—he would recognize that voice anywhere.

"I knew that sound could only be the TARDIS. And a fat lot of good you've been! Showing up late! Popped off for a snow cone, did you?"

At first, the Doctor thought Donna was just giving him a hard time but, as she got closer, the look on her face showed him that something was really wrong.

"What do you mean late?" he asked quickly. "It's Christmas Eve, isn't it?"

"Yes, it's Christmas Eve!" she barked, shoving a newspaper into his hands. "It's also the fourth day of the warnings."

He stammered out a few sounds that he supposed were the beginnings of questions but decided it was probably best to look at the paper. The cover showed several photos of holes in the ground—perfectly round holes, too deep to see how far they went.  _"Give us the Star",_ the headline read,  _Mysterious holes appear all over world._

"What is this?" he asked, handing the paper to Harry. "What does it mean?"

"Come with me to the house and I'll explain," Donna answered. "They say it's not safe to be outside."

They walked quickly in the cold, Harry reading through the newspaper as Donna spoke. Today was the fourth day, she said, since the warnings first began to appear. In the beginning it was just a message that broadcast over the radios and televisions, a simple message that said, "Give us the Star". Nobody had taken it very seriously, believing it to be a hoax, until the next day when three holes mysteriously appeared in the Earth.

One was in England, one in Russia, and one in Mexico, all the exact same size in diameter and all three were too deep to find the bottom. Then the message appeared again—across every communication device on the planet the words "Give us the Star" were either seen or heard at the exact same moment. This was the fourth day and a total of sixty-two holes were spotted across the planet.

"When it first happened, I thought you'd know about it and show up—"

"I'm here, aren't I?"

"On day four!"

"Has anybody died?" Harry asked.

"Not yet."

"Then we're not late."

Donna glanced over her shoulder to glare him and, though he didn't look back to check, he was sure that Harry answered the glare with a grin. "Jack's been working himself half to death over this," she continued. "He's been holed up in one of the bedrooms with a bunch of computers since it first happened. He says it's something alien."

"Probably is," the Doctor agreed. "Are any of the holes nearby?"

"There's one just about a mile away. I'll take you to it once we've popped in the house. Grandad will throw a fit if you don't say hello first," she muttered, then paused and glanced at Harry. "I suppose you'd throw a fit even if he didn't."

It was all good fun to make jokes about it, but the way that Wilfred threw his arms around Harry and the way that Harry nearly lifted the old man off his feet proved how much they had missed each other. It was quite strange to see, really. The Doctor had known Harry since they were small children, but he'd never known him to show such affection to anyone outside of his family. Harry had never been very close to either of his parents, but he still loved them, and he had been a very protective brother once upon a time. The Doctor supposed it was possible that Harry had been searching for someone to fill the void that his family left, and Wilfred fit the bill wonderfully.

They spent a few minutes to chat before Wilfred hurried off to make them drinks, excitedly announcing that he'd bought more of the vanilla cinnamon tea that Harry was so fond of. Donna led them upstairs to find Jack where he was hard at work in her old bedroom.

The Doctor couldn't quite put his finger on it at first, but something about the room was very disturbing to him. It wasn't until he opened his mouth and exposed his tongue to the room's air that he realized there was the taste of months old, stale blood in it. Worse was that it was absolutely not the taste of human blood. His eyes travelled to the floor at the suspiciously placed rug and decided it would be best to keep his mouth closed to simply avoid the taste.

Jack hadn't stopped typing or talking since they walked in the door and the Doctor suddenly realized that he was probably supposed to be listening. Harry looked like he was concentrating on whatever Jack was telling them, so the Doctor was sure that he could get any missed notes off of him. In the meantime, he glanced at the screen Jack was working on and saw that he was clearly trying to find any kind of signal that mimicked a recorded pattern from the warning broadcast.

"My point is that I can't find anything within range of the planet to be sending the broadcast." That was all the Doctor caught from everything Jack had been saying.

"Which means they've either got some decent cloaking technology," Harry muttered, leaning forward and strummed his fingers on the desk. "Or the signal isn't coming from space."

"That's what I'm thinking," Jack confirmed. "The signal is coming from somewhere on Earth."

"Silurians?"

"I don't think so," the Doctor answered with a shake of his head. "It's not really their style. Silurians prefer stealth over four days worth of warnings. Besides, I think the bigger question is not where the message is coming from. Where are the  _holes_  coming from?"

"Donna said one of the holes wasn't far from here," Harry said quickly. "We should go have a look."

"Then let's go look," Jack answered almost cheerfully.

Wilfred announced that the kettle was almost ready as they all came hurrying down the stairs. The Doctor promised him that they would be back in just a few minutes and they raced out the door. Jack's car was barely moving before Harry leaned forward in his seat to tap the Doctor on the shoulder.

"Didn't I tell you?"

"You said while we weren't here," the Doctor answered with a sigh. "As far as I know, nothing terrible happened the whole time we were gone. We're here now so anything that does happen doesn't count."

There was a police line with a single guard to keep people away from the hole, but a flash of his psychic paper gained the Doctor access. "They're with me," he muttered, waving the others past the line with him. "The experts on this sort of thing."

There wasn't a whole lot said between the four of them as they examined the hole. Donna asked how far down it went and a little test with the sonic screwdriver told him that it likely reached the layers of hot magma beneath the crust.

"Look at the burn pattern going clockwise," Jack muttered, pointing to the darkened lines that spiralled downwards of the tunnel.

"What does that mean?" Donna asked.

"Only laser drills leave burn patterns like that," Harry answered. "And laser drills tend to twist in a clockwise turn, leaving spiralling burn patterns."

"So, the laser came from the sky?" she said, ducking down to get another look at the scorch marks in the earth. "It came from the sky, right? Because if it came from inside the planet, the burns would be going the other way, right?"

"Right," the Doctor nodded.

"So it's not Silurians," Jack said with a heavy sigh.

"But you said the signal wasn't coming from space."

"The signal for the broadcast warnings isn't coming from space," Jack confirmed. "But apparently the thing that's creating the holes is."

"So the laser is in space, but the people controlling it are on Earth?"

"That's right."

Donna scrunched her face up a bit, crossing her arms and glancing at the sky as if she had smelled something bad in the air. "Can't we wait for them to turn the laser on and track that signal? I mean, a signal's a signal."

"Yeah, I think that's all we  _can_  do," Jack nodded his head quickly and glanced upward as well. "If we can get a look at the technology these guys are using we'll have a way better idea of what we're up against."

"I want to know what the Star is," Harry interrupted. "You said that the messages demand the surrender of a Star. What do they actually want?"

"Wouldn't that just be the sun?"

"No, Donna," the Doctor answered quietly. "There are plenty of other stars just like your sun that don't have any life surrounding them. Besides, if someone had the power to take an  _actual_  star, I don't think they'd spend four days asking for us to hand it over."

With that, they headed back to the house. Harry said he really wanted the cup of tea he was promised, and the Doctor had to admit that he did too. Meanwhile Jack could set up his scanners to sift through any signals heading out into space that seemed at all unusual. It was very likely that whatever kind of vessel was being used for firing lasers would go into a sleep mode when not being commanded, making it very difficult to find without first being led to it.

Jack went to work, and the others sat down for a bit of catching up. Donna told them all about her honeymoon and showed off her pictures while everyone politely nodded and asked all the right questions. Harry managed to relate the tales of their five weeks together with the Doctor only needing to cough or pinch him into silence twice.

They'd barely finished their tea, mugs sitting on the table empty but still warm, when Jack came into the room.

"I found one," he said quietly.

"Found one what?" Wilfred asked, twisting around in his seat.

"That was fast," the Doctor answered, frowning slightly.

"Too fast," Harry agreed.

"They're activating," Jack said in nearly a whisper. ". . . Aggressively."

A TV flickered to life in the corner of the room, showing nothing but a white screen.

"Give us the Star," a voice declared loudly. "Give us the Star."

"That's it! That's the bloke we've been hearing all week," Wilfred cried, pointing his finger at the blank screen. "Always says the same thing but never anything useful."

"You've got a lock on the signal, Jack?" the Doctor called out, carefully watching the screen in case any images appeared.

"Locked," Jack confirmed. "But I can't track the broadcast, just the laser."

"Give us the Star," the voice repeated. "Or your planet will burn."

The TV shut off again and the room was left in an uncomfortable silence. "He never said that before," Donna said with a slight quiver to her voice. "Our planet will burn? Is it like those things from Pompeii? Is it the Pyrovile again?"

"Ohh, Pyrovile!" Harry answered almost too excitedly. "It could be, you know. Haven't seen them in a long time. I thought they were all gone."

"Right. I have a feeling that we're running out of warnings," the Doctor said, standing up from the couch and reaching for the coat he'd left slung over the back of it. "Whoever is coming, we're leaving now. We have to get to that laser and find out exactly who is leaving all the love notes."

"Five quid says it's the Pyrovile," Donna said, jabbing Harry in the shoulder as they stood up as well.

"You're on."


	46. The Master

Stepping out of the TARDIS doors had been a bit more exciting than it had in a very long time. The Master had the Doctor at his side, his skin bristling with anticipation. He hadn't had a good fight since the fall of Rassilon and the frantic beating of his hearts told him that he had missed it a little more than he might have thought.

Jack had his gun out already, holding it steady at his side, ready to aim at the first head that presented a threat. But the ship seemed deserted, everything dark except for a few blinking lights here and there. There was a soft hum from the minimal services that the ship was running, and the rest was silence. Even deserted, the place gave him an eerie feeling and he was glad that he'd told Wilfred to stay behind. Shaun had been expected to turn up any minute and he'd mercifully been able to use that to convince the old man to stay where it was safe.

"There's no one here," Donna said quietly.

"Not yet," the Doctor answered. "But I imagine we just set off some bells somewhere. They'll turn up."

"Doctor, come look at this."

Jack was pointing up at one of the walls and everyone hurried over to look. The ship itself was filthy, every surface covered in a thin layer of grime, but this wall had been wiped clean to make room for an image to be burned into its surface.

The likeness of the three characters at the bottom was unmistakable—with their large and muscular troll-like bodies, and their absurdly small heads and tiny dots for eyes. "Tetchdians," the Master announced, taking a step back to glance around at the rest of the filthy room. "Donna, you owe me five quid. This is a Tetchdian mining ship."

"Yeah, but . . . it's Christmas Eve," Donna said with a nervous chuckle, as though she didn't quite believe what she was seeing. "It's Christmas Eve and we're looking at a picture like this on an alien ship . . . it's got to be some sort of prank, right? It's got to be a joke."

Three Tetchdians dressed in ceremonial garb, two humanoid beings off to the side, in the center was a cot with what appeared to be a baby inside it, and, hovering above them all, shone a bright star.

"No," the Doctor whispered, staring up at the image with heaviness in his eyes. "I'm afraid it's not a joke."

"What, are we dealing with nutjobs here?" Jack asked loudly, looking back and forth between the image and the Doctor. "Does that mean what I think it means?"

"If it does, then we're in big trouble," the Doctor sighed. "Someone holding a planet hostage for a profit is one thing, but someone who's doing it because they believe it's divine will—someone who thinks that doing it is righteous . . ."

"Well, we'll just reason with them," Donna said decisively. "We just explain to them. They got the story mixed up, that's all. We just explain it to them and they'll leave us alone."

There was a bit of a tense silence that followed in which he knew that Donna was waiting to be told something reassuring and the Doctor couldn't bring himself to do it.

"Let's get to work," Jack announced loudly. "We need information! Documents, tools, recordings—anything that'll tell us what they want and what they're capable of doing when they don't get it."

Jack and the Doctor both hurried off, and the Master went to follow them when Donna took hold of his arm. "You don't lie," she blurted out suddenly. "At least, you don't lie as much as this lot."

He glanced over at the Doctor, who was stubbornly refusing to look in their direction, and looked back at the optimistic pleading in Donna's eyes. "It's always possible," he said carefully. "I mean, there's always a chance that they would listen to reason."

"But they won't."

"No," he answered with a sigh. "I never did. The Doctor could make all the sense in the world but . . . if you've based your whole reality on one thing, it's not exactly easy to let it go just because somebody is making sense. It's easier to accept the madness than to accept that your whole life has been wrong. And this," he gestured to the image on the wall. "Tends to have that effect on people. But that doesn't mean you can't try."

She smiled a little, though it was clearly forced and her distress was clear on her face. "Then we better get to work."

The Doctor ran about with his sonic screwdriver while the Master got into the hardware and wiring. Donna hurried around the room gathering any physical documents and images and Jack worked feverishly at a computer. It was very quickly confirmed to be a Tetchdian mining ship and that they had been remotely controlling the laser drills to create the holes in the Earth, though the Doctor wasn't entirely sure why. For now, they were just running on the theory that it was for the sake of intimidation and that saying the planet would burn could simply be a bluff.

"These all look like what they're getting their stories from," Donna said after a few minutes, holding up a handful of papers. "The same words keep popping up over and over."

"What kind of words?" the Doctor called out from the corner he was working in.

"A Star born amongst stars."

"Yes, good. Any mention what the Star is?"

"Hang on a minute!" Donna snapped, flipping through the pages some more. "It says there is a Star, born amongst stars, that's brought down to Earth in the form of an Impossible Child."

"An actual child?" Jack asked.

"Well, it doesn't exactly have a list of meanings for metaphors here."

"The picture on the wall shows a baby, Doctor," Harry said next, feeling his hearts sink a little at the thought. If the Tetchdians wanted a child, they couldn't exactly bluff their way through the situation unless they actually sacrificed a child. He suddenly remembered that very private conversation with Jack just a few weeks ago and felt his stomach turn a little.

"Alright, so they want a child," the Doctor's voice was increasingly gaining an edge as he was liking the situation less and less. "But not just any child. A very specific child. How do we know which one?"

"I don't know," Donna flipped through the pages frantically now. "It doesn't say."

"Well, that would by why they're demanding it be handed over, wouldn't it?" Jack suggested. "They don't know so they're hoping that we do."

"Why would  _we_  know?" Donna cried in exasperation. "They want a flipping  _star_  that looks like a baby without any description of what it actually looks like or where to find it? How many babies are there on Earth?"

"Too many," the Doctor answered quietly. "But maybe that's a good thing. We don't want them picking one and flying off."

"We've got explosives!" Jack shouted out. " _Mining_  explosives."

"Meant for blowing asteroids and entire planets apart," the Doctor added, looking up from his work to gaze off into the distance. ". . . That's why they've been drilling the holes. Sure, it's intimidation but, if they don't get what they want . . ."

"They're gonna start dropping bombs down the holes!?" Donna shouted.

"If we are not given the Star, the planet must burn."

Nobody had noticed the creatures enter the room, and the Master suspected that they must have teleported silently there. They stood tall, with beady, milky looking little eyes gazing at them curiously. There were three all together, but the two on either side had ceremonial leather bands strapped around their mouths, scorched with images of the Haephsian Sun. Obviously the one in the middle was handling all negotiations.

Jack’s first instinct was to stand tall, look them in the eye, and put a hand on his gun, while the Doctor backed up and herded Donna away from them. The Doctor didn't need to speak for him to know what he wanted, so the Master reached forward to take Donna by the arm and keep her beside him.

The Doctor's eyes met his for a moment and he recognized a hint of fear in them. "Harry—"

"Don't," he said quickly. "Don't you dare. We'll be fine. Just deal with this."

". . . Okay," The Doctor nodded a little before looking away and stepping closer to the Tetchdian again. "Why?" he asked simply, his voice loud and commanding.

"We must have the Star," the Tetchdian answered, tilting its head slightly to the side.

"Well, we can't help you there. We don't know how to find the Star—we don't even know what it is, really."

"The people of Earth celebrate its coming. We have seen your images, your idols. This is the night on Earth for welcoming the Star and you celebrate. Your cities are filled with idols of it and we have seen them."

" _Christmas_  trees!" Jack cried out in exasperation. "They're just Christmas tree stars! It's just a festive decoration, nothing more."

"They are a sign," the troll-like creature responded slowly. "The Star comes tonight."

"But what good will blowing apart the planet do?" the Doctor asked in annoyance. "All you'll be doing is killing billions of innocent people and your Star with them."

"The planet will burn," the Tetchdian repeated calmly. "Our explosives will not break the planet, only make it bleed. Its crust will break and its magma will flow freely, and the planet will burn. We will not have a choice if you do not comply."

The Master could see the brief look of confusion pass over the Doctor's face and he piped up. "A star would survive the fires, is that the idea?"

"Yes."

"So, you would kill every other life form on a planet for the sake of finding just one?"

"The process of elimination may be necessary," the Tetchdian bowed its head solemnly. "It would be regrettable, but necessary. The prophecies foretell a great danger for the Star and that if we, the faithful, do not return it to its place amongst the gods before it is taken, then evil will curse this planet first before spreading throughout the entire universe. We would all be doomed."

"I hate to break it to you, but the story you're following has been on Earth a  _long_  time," the Doctor continued with a shake of his head. "The decorations you see are not put up in anticipation—they're put up in  _memory_. You're two thousand years too late."

"It is now."

"Trust me, it's not."

"It is _now_ ," The Tetchdian repeated stubbornly. "My fellows and I used to crew this ship until a day when a malfunction caused us to lose our fuel. We were stranded for weeks and our food resources ran low. We were dying. This ship had been slowly dragged by the gravitational pull of a star and, just when we were near our end, the Star reached out to us and powered the ship. We were saved for a purpose."

"You were saved by a solar flare!" Jack barked.

"The gods reached us and let us see their true form—the stars," the Tetchdian continued, ignoring Jack completely and focusing instead on the Doctor. "But we are not the chosen people. When we went to the Godforge to offer our services and lives for the gods, we were told that the gods would have created us Haephsian if we were meant to worship without challenge. This is our test, to earn our place at the feet of our gods, and their prophecies cannot be wrong. The Star comes now."

"It's a test, is it?" Donna said suddenly, stepping forward and squaring her shoulders. "Then I reckon you're cheating." The Master stepped forward quickly to take her arm again, but she swatted him away aggressively. "I reckon that your gods would have saved you so that you could do some good in the universe, yeah?"

The Tetchdian nodded solemnly. "They are kind and peaceful."

"Then don't you think the test might be proving that  _you_  are kind and peaceful?" she asked, putting her hands on her hips as her courage built. "You think that killing an entire planet because you can't be bothered to look around a bit is going to impress them? It's a  _test_ ; it's  _supposed_  to be hard! What you being so lazy for?"

"It is more than a test," the Tetchdian protested. "It is the fate of the universe. Evil also seeks the Star and, should evil find it, we will all suffer the consequences."

"Better hop to it then."

It wasn't until that moment that he noticed the Doctor moving. Donna was making plenty of noise to keep the Tetchdians' attention and, meanwhile, the Doctor had been very carefully fiddling with something he had half hidden in his coat. The quiet whirring of the sonic screwdriver was barely noticeable over Donna Noble's voice.

"It seems to me that you would be expected to actually do some  _work_ ," Donna continued. "And, if I had to guess, I would think that burning a planet so that you can scan for the very last life form would mean that you had failed your test."

The Doctor caught the Master’s eyes now and he carefully opened his mind to search for any telepathic projections. He saw Jack push a couple of buttons on the computer before him as casually as possible and the Doctor's eyes flicked toward a large metal object built into the floor nearby.

It was the laser drill.

While Donna continued to rant, flailing her arms or bringing her volume up a notch any time the Tetchdians looked like they might stop to look around them, the Master took tiny steps off to the side. He gingerly made his way over to the hardware he had been looking at. Opening the laser's gateway would probably automatically set it off unless it was opened manually while the computer was telling the laser that they were in maintenance mode, stopping the drill from activating.

When he caught Jack's eye, he was answered with a careful nod and the Master slipped his arm through the panelling that he'd left open. He knew he had seen a lever for opening the drill gateway in there somewhere.

"Now, here's your chance to avoid making the worst mistake of your life," Donna said, suddenly changing her tone to one that sounded more serious. "Because I know that this won't end well for you if you do this."

The Master found the lever and pulled it as gently as possible, trying to avoid any unnecessary creaks or metal squeals. Jack hit another button on the computer and the Doctor carefully slipped his hand inside the drill gateway. And just like that they were done. He waited for the Doctor to remove his hand, pulled the lever back into place, and took a step away from the panelling.

"You can search for your Star," Donna was saying now with a pleading sound in her voice. "But you have to do it with kindness and in peace. You have to put in the work for that search without letting other people suffer for you. If your gods really are kind, then that is what they'd want. I'm telling you,  _that_  is the real test."

"You do not know our gods, human," the Tetchdian answered quickly. "But we will think on what you say. You will go now, and we will let your world know our decision but, if our urgency is too great, then you will only get one more warning. If you do not comply, the planet will burn."

There was a quick look that passed between everyone in the group that confirmed their work there was done. They nearly ran back to the TARDIS, wanting to get off the mining ship in case the Tetchdians changed their minds too quickly.

As the TARDIS shook and wailed, the Doctor applauded Donna for her wonderful speech and both Jack and the Master asked repeatedly what exactly they had just done. Donna admitted that, while she hoped the Tetchdians would follow her advice, she had really just wanted to distract them so that the Doctor could begin executing whatever plan she hoped he had come up with.

"You did have a plan, right?" she asked.

The Doctor hurried towards the TARDIS doors so that they could plant their feet on solid Earth again. "I didn't until you mentioned their gods. Let's just hope they listen to you."

All eyes turned to the sky, even though the mining ship would be far too small to see in the daylight. A moment of tense silence passed, then another, and then, suddenly, the sky was bursting with light. It seemed like a full minute before the sound caught up to the explosion of light and a roaring sound far greater than thunder filled the air.

"What is that!?" Donna shrieked. "What's happened?"

The Master turned to see that the Doctor's eyes become heavy and burdened. "They failed your test, Donna," the Doctor said quietly. "They activated the laser drill to give us our last warning. They decided that they didn't want to do this peacefully."

"What did you do?" he couldn't help but ask. "What did you put in the drill?"

The Doctor smirked a little, but it was in a way that did not really look amused. "A piece of your Christmas present actually," he answered, reaching into his coat pocket and pulling out a sheathed dagger.

He recognized it immediately. "You made that on Godforge."

"Yeah, well . . . you seemed to like the daggers in the market, so I made you one," the Doctor said, holding the dagger out for him to take. "I'm afraid it's missing the astral diamond that was on the handle now. Hope you don't mind."

An astral diamond would easily withstand a quick blast from a simple laser drill but, more than that, it would reflect it. The laser would be shot back into the mining ship, ripping holes through its walls, and exposing the Tetchdians to the black void beyond. The explosion was likely caused by the explosives on board being damaged, probably hit by the laser itself.

The Tetchdians really did choose their own fate.

The Master found himself smirking as he looked down at the dagger, crafted by the Doctor's own hands with him in mind. "I didn't get you anything."

"I'll just have to trade you in for someone more considerate then," the Doctor scoffed, though a hint of a real smile tugged at the corner of his mouth now.

Donna was still staring up at the sky in shock, looking rather devastated. The Doctor slid an arm around her shoulders and began to lead her back to the house with the Master and Jack in tow. Jack took over once they reached the front door and led her inside, but the Doctor stopped at the doorway.

"I always wait too long," he said quietly, holding Harry's wrist firmly to stop him from walking into the house. "Anything could have happened up there today. I don't know why I always wait too long, but it just seems like it's never the right time or I'm not quite ready. I thought of it today when I suddenly realized that the tiniest mistake could mean the end of any of us."

The Master already knew what the Doctor meant and, of course, the Doctor knew that he knew, but that didn't make it any easier on the poor man. The Doctor fidgeted a little nervously, his eyes turning back to the flames in the sky and his hands running quickly through his hair. He popped his head through the open door into the house to make sure that no one was around before finally looking Harry in the eye again.

"I want you to know, right now, while it's peaceful and we're not worried about dying or saving the world. . ." The Doctor’s voice sounded strained, but a smile was creeping onto his face. "I love you, Harry. I really do."

The Master felt a bit like a child when his hearts sped up and pumped a little harder in his chest. He wanted to return the words so much—because saying "I love you too" to the Doctor would be much more satisfying than simply saying "I love you"—but his mouth just didn't seem to want to work. Instead he found himself just staring at the Doctor, trying to make sure that he'd heard him right and that he wasn't just hallucinating again.

The Doctor only tolerated it for about three seconds before he got too uncomfortable and pecked a quick kiss on his cheek. "Come on," he said quietly, taking the Master's hand. "Let's go inside."

The Master allowed himself to be pulled along, feeling a bit childlike and wonderstruck as he replayed those words in his head. He could feel the weight of the Godforge dagger in his pocket and remembered again that in only existed because the Doctor had been thinking of him.

"Merry Christmas!" Wilfred was cheering them and hugging everyone, talking about how he knew they could save the world yet again.

Through all the noise and the surreal happiness, the Master was quick to notice that Donna had taken the star off the top of the Christmas tree.


	47. Shaun

"Can you do anything? You know, like . . . superpowers and stuff like that?" Shaun asked, fascinated.

"Not really," the Doctor answered.

"Liar," Harry piped up from the other side of the room, not looking up from the photo albums he was looking through with Wilfred. That man looked remarkably familiar, but Shaun couldn't quite but his finger on it and Harry insisted that they had never met before.

The Doctor looked back at him and sighed. "We have a few."

"What can you do?"

"I'd rather not. Look, can we just—"

The Doctor stopped talking when Shaun jumped with a yelp. He'd just felt a hand grab him firmly by the shoulder and he could still feel it, even though he was looking and could clearly see that there was nothing there. He saw the Doctor's head whip around to glare at the blond man on the couch. The invisible hand let go and Harry smirked silently as he turned another page.

"Did he—?"

"I can't do that," the Doctor answered quickly, holding his hands up as if to show that he hadn't done anything.

"We have some telepathic abilities," Harry explained, still not bothering to look up. "The Doctor is just really bad at it."

"I am not! He's just . . ."

He saw a grin break on Harry's face and even Wilfred looked amused when the Doctor didn't finish his sentence.

"Go on," Wilfred said with a chuckle. "You can say it."

The Doctor sighed again and crossed his arms. "The range of my abilities is perfectly normal for my species. Harry, however, is rather . . . uniquely talented."

"What he's trying to say is I'm brilliant," Harry said, still grinning widely.

"Some people might use that word."

It had been a surreal couple of hours. In the months leading up to this day, Shaun had heard plenty of things about the Doctor and Harry and he had always assumed that they were normal people, like everyone else. Sure, he had met the Doctor before and it had certainly been under strange circumstances, but he never thought too much on it. The more Donna and her grandfather talked about them, the stranger it became.

They sometimes referred to the Doctor's home as a box, sometimes as a ship, and sometimes as a machine, but not once as a house or flat. He had heard Wilfred use the term "their kind" when speaking about them, though, at first, he thought that Wilfred might be referring to their sexuality as he had seen some photos that suggested they were a couple. But some pieces of walked-in-on conversations and accidental slip-ups kept on piling up until it simply didn't make any sense anymore.

When he finally decided to just ask them outright what the truth was about the Doctor and Harry, Donna just looked him right in the eye and said: "They're aliens."

Shaun thought she was having a laugh until Wilfred said the same thing, and then their new friend Jack Harkness also confirmed it. They told him some stories and pointed out that Earth had seen a lot of activity that seemed to be alien in the past few years, and suddenly it didn't seem so farfetched.

When he finally found himself standing in the same room as the two men he'd heard so much about, the first thing that came to his mind when he saw them was to ask: "Are you really aliens?"

Neither of them so much as blinked or looked away and the Doctor very clearly answered with the word yes. For some reason, that one simple word was enough to believe him.

"You don't suppose they might have just been talking about the Racnoss and come a bit late?" Donna blurted out at one point that day. "I mean, didn't the Empress have a ship that looked like a star? And she came to Earth to hatch her babies. Maybe they just heard about her?"

"Could be," the Doctor answered with a noncommittal nod of his head. "We'll probably never know."

Shaun really did feel terrible for Donna. They'd already told him the story and it was easy to see how very upset Donna was about it. She was trying not to be, but he could tell that it was bothering her. He moved over to sit on the couch beside her, then wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in for a cuddle. That earned him a smile and he figured that was good enough.

For a long time, everyone was content to simply visit and chat and talk about their lives over the past few months. He wasn't sure if he ought to believe half the things the two supposed aliens said, but, if they were aliens, then they would have bizarre stories, wouldn't they?

"Right," Wilfred announced, just as the sun was beginning to set. "I'm making one last trip to the shops before everything closes up. Who's coming?"

Harry practically sprang to his feet and Shaun decided it might be best to tag along as well. He felt it would be a good night for a bit of red wine and maybe he could find some little treat for Donna to help cheer her up. When the Doctor started moving to stand up, he saw Harry quickly give him a little to push to sit him back down.

"What are you doing?" Harry asked.

"Well, I'm not about to let you go alone, am I?" the Doctor answered, trying to get up again only to be pushed once more. "I'm sorry, but I really like Earth and I don't really want to set you loose on it."

"Come on, Doctor, he's a big boy," Wilfred answered with a laugh. "Besides, he's got me to keep an eye on him."

"I don't see—oh . . . oh, no, don't go get me a present," the Doctor groaned. "I don't want a present. I really don't. I made you that knife  _ages_  ago, I just kept forgetting to give it to you."

"Who said I was getting you a present?" Harry answered quickly. "Calm your ego down and have a seat while I go do things that don't involve buying you anything."

"Oh, and you're gonna go get yourself something then?"

"Yeah . . . my shirt cuffs got oil on them on the mining ship."

"You're a liar," the Doctor huffed, though he didn't try to get up again.

"No, I just like all my clothes to be clean, thank you. I don't just pick them up off the floor in the morning like some people do."

However, despite whatever Harry might have said, he didn't actually look at a single shirt while they were out shopping. He did ask both Wilfred and Shaun for their opinions on watches and admitted that he intended to get one for the Doctor after all.

"The only thing on the ship that's actually useful for telling time is a clock he has in the kitchen," Harry explained quietly. "Now that alone can be a bit of a pain, but the main thing is—he hasn't really told me, I just sort of saw it in his mind once—I'm pretty sure it came from an old girlfriend of his."

"A  _girl_ friend?" Shaun blurted before he could stop himself.

Harry looked at him and frowned slightly. "Yes, a girlfriend. I had a wife once too, you know. Real women with long hair and lady parts and everything."

He felt his face heat up a bit when Wilfred started laughing. "Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you or anything. I just thought . . . you know, because you and the Doctor—"

"I'll never understand humans and the restrictions you put on yourselves," Harry answered with a shake of his head. "What fun is it if half the population is off limits to you just because of gender?  _Species_  doesn't even stop you once you get out there."

"He's just poking fun at you, lad," Wilfred said, giving Shaun a pat on the back. "Right then, Harry. What kind of watch were you thinking of?"

They did pick one out eventually—a nice stainless steel one that had some kind of a compass built into it as well. They were just talking about heading to the grocery when Harry stopped them again and held up a simple and plain blue scarf.

"What do you think of this, Grandfather?"

Shaun still couldn't get over how weird it was to hear a random man, let alone one who wasn't even human, call Wilfred Grandfather. Donna had told him about that beforehand and mentioned that she considered it one of the strangest things about Harry.

"For the Doctor?"

"Or for me," Harry said, pulling the scarf out properly to get a good look at it. "Either of us, really. It's a nice colour, don't you think?"

"My boy, what on Earth would you do with a scarf?"

"Wear it, I suppose. Isn't that what they're for?"

"You're always complaining it's too hot, Harry," Wilfred answered. "If you buy that thing, it's just going to sit and collect dust. That hat you like is one thing because it keeps the sun of your head, but a scarf will cook you. Just leave it."

Harry hummed thoughtfully, turning the scarf over in his hands to look at it carefully and feel it with my fingers. "No," he said finally. "I think I'll get it. I like it."

"You'll never use it," Wilf said with a shake of his head.

"I'm sure I will."

Then they were off. They stopped by the grocery and Harry was put in charge of guarding the cart while Shaun and Wilfred bustled about to get the shopping. Wilf was mostly picking up last minute cooking supplies for the dinner—oil, spices, cranberry sauce, and the like. The grocery did carry red wine, though Shaun bought one that wasn't too expensive as he hadn't quite got used to the taste of high end wine yet. He grabbed a couple of bottles, just in case, and then popped by the bakery section to look for a nice bit of cheesecake or something for Donna.

They couldn't have been gone for more than an hour, but it was pretty clear rather quickly when they walked back through the door that someone had begun making drinks. The amount of laughter coming from the sitting room was too much to be coming from sober people and Shaun tried to pick up on the words being said as they were removing coats and sorting out bags.

"So, we finally got the stupid thing off," Jack was laughing as he spoke. "And I told him 'you could have just asked'!"

"Who's got the watch?" Harry asked quietly as the laughter from the sitting room erupted into something even louder.

"Oh, I've got one, I've got one!" the Doctor's voice said loudly. "It was two weeks or so ago and we'd just spent a whole day on Hool."

Harry's head suddenly shot up. "He's drunk," he said in surprise and put down the bags he was carrying. "We haven't even been gone that long. How did they get him drunk?"

"It had been a long day and it was hot—you know how he gets," the Doctor continued as Shaun followed Harry into the sitting room and Wilfred bustled off to the kitchen. "So I walked into the bedroom to find him tearing through all his drawers with no memory whatsoever of where he is—"

"Hello!" Harry said loudly, a bit friendlier sounding than usual. "Are you telling them about Hool?"

"No, I'm telling them about  _after_  Hool," the Doctor corrected. "As I was saying, he thought he was still in the Year That Never Was and that I was being held prisoner, so when I walked in the room he flipped—"

"Why don't we just tell them about Hool?" Harry interrupted. "It's a pretty good story, I think."

"No, shut up. I'm telling  _this_  story," the Doctor answered with a dismissive hand wave. "Oh! But tell them what you said when you saw me! Oh, you should have seen him, Jack. Pale as a ghost. 'How the hell did you get out?' he shouted at me, and then I thought—"

"The only thing is, Doctor," Harry interrupted again. "I have a feeling that you might not want everyone hearing this story if you hadn't been drinking."

"Oi, I said shut up. Anyway, I thought to myself that he's got no idea that we're actually together now. I mean, as far as he knows, we've never even kissed—"

"How did you get him this drunk?" Harry asked loudly. "Alcohol does not affect us strongly enough to get him drunk this quickly. What did you give him?"

"He told us about that little trick," Donna answered excitedly. "Just a bit of clove extract and vinegar in his drink, just like he said."

Harry groaned and walked over to the couch where the Doctor was sitting. "Doctor, why would you tell them that?"

"Just shh!" the Doctor snapped, giving Harry a light smack in the leg. " _Anyway_ , I thought to myself that I could have a bit of fun with him. So I rattled off some nonsense about escaping and ruining all his plans and  _then_  I said—what did I say, Harry? Tell them. It's funny."

Harry sighed a little in resignation and sat down beside the Doctor. "Then he said 'However'—"

" 'Before we try to kill each other'."

"'Before we try to kill each other over it, I have a proposition for you'."

"And then what did I do?"

"You're going to be so mad about this in the morning, you know that?" Harry said, though he was smirking a bit now.

"Yeah, but that's hours away. Now, come on! Tell them what I did!"

"He started taking his shirt off."

"I took my shirt off!" the Doctor repeatedly proudly, earning another eruption of laughter from Donna and Jack. "You should have seen his face, Donna. He got all shy and nervous all of a sudden—he even reminded me rather sternly that he was married."

"I thought I was!"

"Tell me you didn't turn him down?" Jack asked loudly, reaching over to give Harry a push on the shoulder.

"No," Harry answered quickly. "I just . . . well, first off, I didn't really believe him in the beginning. And keep in mind we'd been at war with each other for centuries so saying I felt conflicted is putting it  _very_  mildly."

"It's okay, Harry," Donna said kindly. "You can just say that you were scared."

"Like a teenage girl on prom night," Jack added.

"I was  _not_  scared."

"Aw, but you were so gentle and lovely, you were," the Doctor said in the kind of voice Shaun would expect someone to use if they were cooing over a dog. "It's not often you get shy but, when you do, it's just plain adorable. And, cautious as you were, you did do well, I'll give you that. If it had really been the first time, I would have been very impressed."

"How do you mean?" Donna asked, sounding completely serious now. "Was the first time not good?"

Shaun decided to follow Harry's example and found a spot to sit besides Donna and listen to her and the others tease each other. Wilfred came in a couple of minutes later with a tray of fresh drinks for everyone. Jack quickly hurried off to get the clove extract and vinegar to add to Harry's drink and soon enough they were all laughing together as they took turns telling stories.

He thought about the cheer-up cheesecake he'd bought that Wilfred had put away in the fridge and was now long forgotten. Donna was different with these people. There had always been days when Donna was inexplicably sad, which he'd always thought but never dared to say aloud were caused by hormones. Now he was discovering that it was because she was missing someone she couldn't remember. He thought about the times when she'd had a bad day and how he could always cheer her up, but it usually took a bit of work and sweet talking.

Today he didn't have to pull out any of his old tricks. The cheesecake was forgotten and, though he sat beside her on the couch with his arm around her shoulders, he had a feeling that she didn't really need a cuddle or any affectionate words to be happy today. These crazy, alien people gathered together with her family were enough.

Shaun suddenly felt very relieved that the Doctor and Harry had each other, even more so because Donna said that she thought of them as family. Sometimes she would accidentally mention them around other people and, when asked who they were, she was quick to say that the Doctor was her younger brother and that Harry was her cousin. If she ever got something along the lines of "I never knew you had a brother" in response, she'd just tell them that he was a very busy doctor who had to travel a lot for work. But, as December had crept nearer and nearer, she began to smile and add "but he's coming home for Christmas".

Wilfred had picked up the same habit of telling people they were his grandsons. Sometimes he would have to be a bit more inventive and say that one of them was related through marriage (usually Harry, because the Doctor was supposedly Donna's brother) to avoid the curious looks when people saw the photos where they looked a little too close for cousins.

Shaun had certainly had some reservations about joining a couple of aliens and leaving everything he knew behind, even if it was only for a little while. The universe was just so big—too big—and who knew what was out there? He'd told Donna he would think about it when she asked him about the pair of them travelling with the Doctor, but he knew enough now.

He would never again be able to give Donna a piece of cheesecake and a cuddle and hope that that was enough to make her happy on a bad day. He would never again be able to go on holiday with her to some tropical island and think that it was enough to amaze her. His wife deserved everything that would make her happy. She deserved the stars themselves.

He squeezed his arm around her shoulder a little to pull her close and leaned over to whisper in her ear. "So . . . what exactly am I supposed to pack?"


	48. The Doctor

Time was moving too fast. It was just racing by, and the Doctor was beginning to worry. At the start of this journey, when he came face-to-face with the Master in that junkyard, he never would have dreamed that it would have brought him here. He'd stepped onto a slippery slope, making it hard to slow down and impossible to stop. He remembered now why he always took too long to say those very important three little words—because admitting it gave it strength.

He was dependant now. He missed Harry when he wasn't in the room and it was beginning to feel odd going to bed alone. Harry regularly spent the night in the Doctor's room but he did it less often now that the others were back on the ship, and the Doctor was finding himself sneaking into Harry's room rather than sleep alone.

He spent more and more time in the lab with him, just to watch him work. He had always admired how passionate Harry was about his work. He couldn't see Harry smile and not smile himself. He couldn't see the sadness or fear in his eyes during an attack and resist running to him, holding him. Even when Harry was being really annoying and driving him crazy, part of him would be laughing on the inside at how typical it was that, even after all they'd been through, they would still fight over the stupidest things.

He was falling harder and faster each day and, as amazing as it was, it was terrifying. The clock was always counting down and the watch that he now wore every day was just a reminder of it. There were some days when the fear was too much and he felt the need to distance himself, but there was no point in trying to fool the other Time Lord. Harry knew exactly what it meant whenever the Doctor grew a little cold or was behaving in way that was just begging for a fight. Worse, Harry knew exactly how to coax him back out of it and he was in love all over again.

What would he do when time ran out? He was going to fight, he knew that much. He and Harry would both fight like hell for each other and that little she-devil, whatever she may call herself, would certainly not collect her prize easily. But what if they lost?

So very long ago, when the Doctor lost Rose and Donna on the same day, it felt like that had to be the end of it. His hearts simply couldn't take any more. When he swaggered out of the TARDIS onto the ice planet of the Ood, as though everything was just as fun and carefree as it always was, it was because pretending was the only thing he had left to keep him together. He felt like he had healed from those wounds now, despite the scars they may have left behind, but he was certain he wouldn't survive such heartbreak again.

Eight months. That was all they had left now. Eight months until their year was over and whatever nightmare was waiting for them arrived.

"You haven't turned a page in twenty minutes."

The voice startled him enough that he nearly dropped the book in his hands. He forgot that he was supposed to be reading. Wilfred was looking down at him with a kind smile and reached a wrinkled hand down to take the book from him.

"What's on your mind?"

The Doctor smiled a bit, despite feeling like he had a giant stone in his stomach. "Time."

"Ah, then you finally know what it's like to be a human." Wilfred's smile spread a little, into one a bit more devious and added, "Old man."

He waited for Wilfred to sit down in the empty chair beside him before speaking. "Do you think she'll kill us?"

"Maybe," Wilfred answered casually, turning over the book in his hands to investigate it. "I think that depends on what you're prepared to do."

That hadn't really been the answer he was expecting, and certainly not the answer he had been hoping for. The Doctor’s brows locked together and he turned his gaze to the empty space across the room, pondering over it for a moment.

"Harry doesn't like talking about it much," Wilfred continued after a moment of silence had passed. "But I think we've both gathered enough to know that he won't be able to do it."

"Do what?"

"Kill her."

The stone in his stomach suddenly became heavier. "Maybe it won't come to that."

"Maybe it won't," Wilf agreed. "I hope it won't. But you still have to be prepared. If you hadn't taken that gun from me on Christmas day—if you hadn't been prepared to shoot the Master if you needed to—you wouldn't be together now. He would never have become  _Harry_. I saw his face just as well as you did."

That had truly been a strange moment. The Doctor remembered the look in the Master's eyes at that moment and knowing that something had changed. As those brown eyes looked down the barrel of the gun, they didn't look fearful. They looked sad.

"He never thought I would actually kill him," the Doctor answered. "When he realized that I just might . . ."

"Always hope for the best, Doctor," Wilfred said quietly. "But plan for the worst."

They still had eight months, he thought to himself. An awful lot could happen in eight months.

Another hour passed in heavy silence, periodically broken by idle chatter before a distraction was presented. Shaun found them in the library and told the Doctor that Harry was behaving strangely, and Jack had said to get the Doctor immediately.

The Doctor had been impressed with Shaun Temple overall. The man had been hesitant to leave Earth, even more so to set foot on an alien planet, but he was proving useful. He had a knack for gadgetry and had been helping Harry with his little projects. He had even learned how to do a bit of maintenance on the TARDIS in the short time he'd been with them. But this would be his first time witnessing an attack, if it escalated.

 _Oh, please don't let it escalate_.

Just as Wilfred had told him, he hoped for the best but expected the worst.

When he stepped into the mechanics room where Harry had been working, he realized that he was probably facing the worst. Harry's skin was lit up with the brightest gold, his face the picture of grief. Every part of the Doctor wanted to just throw his arms around him and kiss him, but the presence of blood on Jack's face told him that it was not a safe time to do so. At least Jack's gun was still safely in its holster.

"He was fine and then he started muttering something about using his regeneration energy and looked at me like he had no idea who I was," Jack explained quickly. "A few seconds after Shaun left the room, he just flipped and, of all things, he called me a son of a bitch."

Jack didn't need to tell him much more. No one appeared to have any injuries so he could only assume that the blood had to be Jack's own and the wound had already healed up. A heavy looking chunk of machinery was on the floor, small enough to pick up with one hand, and some sharp looking edges on it were dripping with fresh blood.

Jack followed his eyes to the metal on the floor and just gave a quick nod of his head.

"I'm sorry, Jack," Harry shouted as his skin lit up again, his voice filled with distress. "But I don't know what you're doing!"

He was trapped halfway, the Doctor realized. He could sense the confusion in the air, feel the chaos of it. Harry was fighting to keep his awareness and now he was just caught halfway between the real world and the nightmares of his mind. He was afraid of Jack, but he didn't know why, and he was lashing out in that fear.

It wasn't until then that the Doctor noticed Donna slowly peeking over the desk she had hidden behind off to the side. She was afraid, and rightly so. What if Harry lashed out at her next?

"Harry," he said clearly, stepping forward to grab his attention. "Look at me, Harry. It's me."

Those brown eyes turned towards him and the Doctor stepped off to the side, opposite of where Donna was and away from the door. If he could keep Harry distracted away from the door, the others could get out.

"Doctor," Harry responded exactly how the Doctor had hoped he would, ignoring everyone else as Shaun slipped into the room to get Donna out. He was keeping one eye on Jack though, his whole body tense and ready to move if he felt threatened.

"It's safe here, Harry," the Doctor assured him. "We're here to help you. Tell me what's wrong."

Harry's eyes widened and his skin lit up again, brighter than the Doctor had ever seen it. "They took them."

"Took who?"

Shaun and Donna made it safely through the doorway and Harry barely noticed, but the moment Jack stepped towards the door he tensed again and raised a fist with another chunk of machinery.

"Hey! Come on, now!" the Doctor said loudly, waving his arms a bit to get Harry's attention back. "Jack's not here to hurt you either. He just wants to help. Just like me."

"Why does he keep moving?"

"Because he wants out of the room," the Doctor answered quietly. "You're scaring him."

"I'm scaring  _him_!?"

"Yes. Yes, you're scaring him. Look at his face. You see that?"

Harry's eyes travelled back to Jack, seemingly surprised by the sight of blood. "Was that me?"

"Yes."

"They took them," Harry repeated firmly, his fingers flexing and tightening into fists repeatedly—ready to fight. "They took my boys away."

The baby. That was the key.

"What are they boys' names?" he asked quickly. "Harry, what are their names?"

"The . . ." He was frowning now, becoming more stressed and confused, but at least a bit distracted from Jack. "The older one's name is Berran."

"Berran, that's right," the Doctor confirmed. "And the other?"

"I didn't name him," Harry shook his head miserably and the Doctor felt a sudden wave of grief rush forth from him. "Doctor, she's killed him, and I didn't even name him."

"No, you did. You named him, Harry. What's the baby's name?"

"You're not listening to me!" Harry shouted angrily, and the telepathic projection of his grief was so strong that the Doctor felt stinging in his own eyes. "He's just little! Do you know how scared he must be? After seeing something like  _that_?"

That stone in the Doctor’s stomach returned again and his vision suddenly blurred with the presence of tears. She killed the baby in front of them. In front of them both.

"Harry, I'm sorry," he said, fighting to keep the strength in his voice as he spoke. "I am so, so sorry. But I need you to focus. I need you to think. What did you name your second son?"

It took Harry a minute. His face kept changing, his whole body changing back and forth between relaxing and preparing for a fight, his eyes flicked back and forth between Jack and the Doctor as his mind struggled to find the reality.

"Wilson," he said finally, his skin glowing again but dimly this time. "Berran and Wilson."

"Why did you name him Wilson? Think about it. Remember what happened. Why did you choose Wilson?"

Another minute passed in which the internal fight was evident in his eyes. The glow in his skin was appearing less frequently and was weaker with each burst. The Doctor could feel the emotions rolling off of him and knew that he was coming back. He was fighting it a little, not wanting to stay confused but not wanting to face the reality of it either.

Then it happened. The realization swept over his mind, his eyes widened with shock and his breath hitched. The chunk of machinery fell from his hand and landed with a dull thud on the floor.

"Everybody out," the Doctor ordered in as stern a voice as he could muster.

Harry would never forgive him if Jack saw him cry.

He already looked like he swaying a bit but, when the Doctor touched him, it seemed that he gave up. Hands clutched at the Doctor's arms desperately and he helped Harry down to the floor. He could hear Donna sniffling too as Jack closed the door behind him, but the others could take care of her.

"I'm so sorry, Harry," he whispered, wrapping his arms around the other body tightly, cradling him against his chest and ignoring the bruising force that Harry's fingers were grasping at him with. "I'm so sorry."

Harry never said a word, though the Doctor wasn't sure if that was by choice or not. At first, he was completely silent aside from the ragged breathing—in shock, as far as the Doctor could tell. Then the grief hit him and those fingers on his arms tightened their grip even more and Harry's legs drew in close to his body.

For a moment, it reminded him of the last day of the Year That Never Was. That moment when the great and powerful Master reverted to some small and frightened version of himself that the Doctor didn't know. He had curled up on the floor, much like this, and the Doctor had held him then too. He didn't know then where that man who was paralyzed by fear could have possibly come from and, now that he did, it broke his heart to realize the Doctor himself had once brought that out in him.

He was just a father who was afraid to lose his children, only to realize he already had.

The Doctor had no idea how much time had passed until he remembered Harry's Christmas gift and thought to look at his watch. It was forty-five minutes before Harry calmed down enough for them to sit in silence, and the Doctor worked hard at projecting feelings of love just so that Harry wouldn't be left numb and empty. Another half hour and Harry dared to let go of him.

The steel grip he had on the Doctor's arms had been slowly relaxing as his watch ticked along, but it wasn't until he actually let go that the Doctor felt he could breathe. He didn't move, just in case Harry wasn't quite as ready as he thought he was, and kept his arms around him while the other Time Lord rubbed his eyes and came back to his senses.

"She killed them both," Harry whispered breathlessly.

"Yes."

"What do I do?"

The Doctor felt his hearts hurt a little more for him when he heard that terrible question that he knew could never be answered. What do you do? How do you survive? How do you step forward to another day and smile?

"I don't know," the Doctor answered truthfully. "Keep calm and carry on?"

That earned him a laugh, albeit a very choked sounding laugh, and he thought it might be safe to let go of him now. They sat on the floor together for a while, stretching out their cramped up limbs while Harry talked a little bit about his boys. Berran had blue eyes and talked about growing up to build houses, and Wilson always gave a little angry shout in warning before he'd start to cry. Funny little things like that.

"Did I hit Jack?" he asked after a little while.

"Yeah. Made him bleed too."

"Did I apologize for it?"

"Yes, actually."

"Damn it."

After Harry had had time to shower and come back to himself, the Doctor took them all out for the evening. Wilfred protested at first, saying that it was a terrible idea to go out when Harry was unwell, but he won in the end when he told them where he planned to go.

Kui-Poian was a marsh planet run by an amphibious species that was famous for their advanced technology regarding water manipulation. It had all sorts of wonderful uses, but the most popular was for theatrics.

They spent the night in the open air under the stars and the twin red moons, lying amongst the tall turquoise grass of the Moj-Dei plains. Donna had been clever enough to make them bring blankets which spared them from the dampness of the ground and kept them warm when the chill of night began to creep up on them.

The water was filled with bioluminescent microbes of different species so that it lit up with all sorts of colours, then the water was manipulated to move through the air. The water containing different coloured microbes were all controlled separately so that it could be manipulated to create specific images in the sky. Music was played to match the images and it was like watching some kind of magical ballet floating up above them.

Harry held his hand throughout it all and not a word was said except for the occasion murmur of admiration from someone in the group. All the while, through the connection of their grasped hands, the Doctor let his mind do the talking for him. If he couldn't think of words strong enough to let Harry know how happy he was just to be there with him and that he would try his hardest to make the beauty of their future together enough to make up for their past, he could at least let him feel it.

When they returned to the TARDIS and climbed into bed, he let that feeling surround Harry. He was very careful to be slow and be gentle, and to make sure that, when the narin connected them, he didn't let Harry's mind drift away. He told him to lie still and relax and just let the Doctor's consciousness flow into him to fill him with that calming cloud of happiness and love.

Maybe he shouldn't have been doing it, he thought. There was some risk and it would leave Harry tired tomorrow, but he hoped that if he just tried hard enough that the infusion in Harry's mind would keep him calm and happy and prevent another attack. More than anything, as he moved and touched and kissed the man beneath him, he just wanted Harry to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was loved.

That message was so important. It was all that he had that he could even hope would ease Harry's pain and remind him why he was still here. It was the only thing he could hope could answer that terrible question of how you're meant to go on living after losing everything.

_I love you. I love you. I love you._


	49. Wilfred

Wilfred had no doubt that the Doctor was a very clever man, but that didn't mean he wasn't wrong sometimes.

While Harry's attack the day before had not been as bad as some of the others, Wilf knew it had still been devastating to Harry himself. And, while the evening trip had still been something calm and wasn't physically demanding, it was still not the same as being bundled up and resting in your own bed. He trusted the Doctor, but he did feel that sometimes he could put a little bit too much responsibility on Harry to just deal with a situation.

And that was why he had designated himself as caregiver for the day.

As expected, the Doctor got out of bed earlier than Harry did. The moment Wilfred saw the Doctor enter the kitchen, he picked up his cup of tea and toast and told him exactly what he intended to do. He was going to watch Harry to make sure that he was alright and help him if necessary. He reminded the Doctor that if he hadn't just happened to have been in the next room the morning after Harry had been shot, he would not have been there to prevent him falling on the floor or to help him when he got sick. He made sure to say all of this in as stern a grandfatherly tone as he could because he certainly was not in the mood to argue something that should have been obvious to everyone by now.

No one dared to present such an argument.

Maybe he was being a bit too stern and they were worried that he was angry. "It was a wonderful show last night, Doctor. Thank you for taking us," he was sure to add in a kinder voice before leaving the kitchen. "I just worry about Harry."

It did feel a bit strange to enter someone's bedroom while they were still sleeping, but Wilf was sure that it wouldn't be quite as strange as helping a grown man take a shower. He had done a few odd things for the sake of Harry's health, he decided, so watching him sleep would not be so strange really.

However, despite whatever he was expecting, Harry was not asleep. He was still in bed, but he was lying awake when Wilfred came through the door.

"What are you doing in here?" Harry asked carefully, pulling the blankets right up to his chin.

"Keeping an eye on you," Wilf answered simply. "What are you covering yourself like that for?"

Harry looked at him for a long moment, as though he weren't sure if he should answer. " . . . I don't know if I'm wearing any clothes."

He chuckled and shook his head in disbelief. "I'll tell you what, just keep your bottom half covered and we'll worry about the rest if you regenerate into a woman, alright?"

At first Harry just chuckled a bit as though he were embarrassed as he let the blanket back down, but then he gave a proper laugh. "Sorry, I'm just a bit tired," he said with a shake of his own head. "Still waking up, I suppose."

It was a little worrisome. Any indication that Harry might not be thinking straight automatically set off alarm bells for Wilfred but, as he was given some time to wake up, Harry seemed to be fine. He was aware of where he was and of what had happened the day before. He asked if Jack and the Doctor had fought about it and was relieved to hear that they hadn't, and then began asking about how Donna and Shaun had handled it.

Maybe he was fine after all.

Eventually Harry dragged himself out of the bed (after checking that he was, in fact, wearing some form of clothing) and began gathering up the clothes strewn about the floor. "He's so bad," Harry complained as he pulled out a stray sock from halfway under the bed. "He just throws his stuff everywhere. You would think, after all the time you spent helping him clean this mess up, that he might make some effort to keep it clean, but no. Apparently even the man with a time machine doesn't feel he has time to carry his clothes the whole extra ten feet to put them in the hamper."

Wilfred chuckled as he watched Harry drop the offending clothes in said hamper and held out his mug of tea to offer him a sip. "Did your wife say the same thing about you?"

Harry marched over to accept the offered sip of tea. "Of course not," he answered as he took the cup. "You don't become Prime Minister by leaving your pants on the floor."

It was so tiny that Wilfred almost missed it but, as Harry bent down to give the cup back, he caught a glance of it. "You've got something on your neck," he pointed out, taking his cup back and sipping from it. "Right there."

Harry swiped at it unsuccessfully. "Did I get it?"

"No, it's further up."

He tried again and, this time, Wilf was certain that he brushed it, but the little speck stayed put. "Come here, I'll get it."

Wilf put his tea down and stood up, though Harry still had to bend a bit for him to get a good look. It was then that he realized what it was. Attached to his skin, with tiny little legs wriggling with stress, was something that looked like a fat little tick, its white body turning a bit pink in the middle.

"It's a bug!"

"What do you mean it's a bug?"

"I mean, it's a bug!" Wilf repeated, pulling at Harry's shoulder to bring him closer so that he could get a better look. "It looks like some kind of tick—a white one. Got his little head buried right in there, the bugger. Hold still and I'll get it."

"Hold on," Harry said quickly, pulling away. "You can't just pull it out. We don't even know what it is yet."

"Yeah, we do. It's a bug."

"We don't know what  _kind_  of bug," Harry answered with a sigh, cupping his hand over top of the tick protectively. "Let me just have a look at it and see if we can identify it."

Wilfred hurried up out of his chair so that he could follow Harry to the bathroom. "Probably got you when we were laying in that tall grass last night," he said as Harry flicked the lights on and leaned in close to the mirror. "I saw a few weird looking bugs last night. That's why I kept bundled up in one of those blankets—didn't want any of them crawling over me."

"Ohh," Harry groaned as he got his first look at the little bug. "It's already turning pink. That means it's been feeding on my blood for at least a couple of hours."

"Do you know what it is then?"

"It's a denndi," he answered irritably.

"Alright, let's pull it off then," Wilfred said with a shrug. "Or do you need to do it a special way? Should I go get the Doctor?"

"Do  _not_  get the Doctor!"

"Why not?"

Harry grimaced as he leaned into the mirror, looking at the bizarre bug again. "Because it's an endangered species," he grumbled. "If the Doctor finds out I've got a denndi attached to me, he'll probably throw a fit if I want to get rid of it."

Wilfred took a second to think about, then shrugged again. "What happens if you keep it?"

"Right now, it's just in the larval stage," Harry explained, still poking at the bug and making faces as though he had a bad taste in his mouth. "If I give it enough time, it'll bury under my skin and it'll start growing. Well, first off, it's in the wrong spot so it'll have to move if I  _do_  let it stay attached . . ."

The image of Harry lying on the floor with blood gushing out of him suddenly burst into Wilfred's mind. "Where is it supposed to be attached?"

"Right about here," Harry answered absentmindedly, gesturing with his hand. "On the chest."

Wilfred had to resist the urge to just squash the little bug right then and there. "How big does it get?"

" _Big_ ," Harry answered, and then gestured with his hands something a bit bigger than a basketball—just as Wilfred feared. "Once it's under my skin it'll connect itself to some of my major arteries, which is why they usually attach on the chest so they get the freshest blood. It'll grow for ten or eleven months—in some cases as long as a year—and then it'll begin separating itself from me. It's safe, for the most part, but it's terribly draining on the host and it can be dangerous if something goes wrong."

"What if it tried to come off early?" he blurted out, barely able to contain himself now that he was remembering all that blood. It still stained the carpet in Donna's old bedroom. He'd had to buy a rug specifically for the purpose of keeping it covered until he had a chance to have the carpet replaced.

"Well, you'd be ripping open the arteries," Harry answered, staring at the reflection indecisively. "It would cause a lot of damage and some pretty nasty scarring if you didn't bleed out, which you probably would. Things like that happen sometimes."

"No. No, no, that's not happening," Wilfred said firmly. "You have enough trouble as it is. Forget the bug. We'll get it pulled out and it'll be somebody else's job to play house to a bug the size of a watermelon."

Harry was chewing on his thumbnail now, nervously shifting his weight. "Grandfather . . . you have no idea how rare a denndi is."

"Not rare enough to risk your life," he answered, crossing his arms. "And I'll tell the same thing to the Doctor if he gives you any grief over it. That thing is coming off."

He took a hold of Harry's arm to pull him out of the bathroom but was surprised when Harry pulled back and got his arm free. "We can't do that," he protested, though he said it a bit weakly. "We just can't. The Doctor—"

"The Doctor gets an awful lot of say over an awful lot of things," Wilfred interrupted, bringing back his grandfatherly voice he had already used that morning. "But no matter what your relationship is, he doesn't get to make a decision like this for you."

"Neither do you."

It was a bit of a shock to hear an answer like that. He supposed he had gotten quite used to Harry simply agreeing with him on everything that he hadn't expected any argument. It was frustrating to say the least. Harry had a point, and he didn't want to be pushy, but Harry had not seen what Wilfred had seen.

He had seen Harry so weak that he could barely keep his eyes open, so weak that he couldn't say a word. He had a room in his very home with a carpet that needed replacing because it had been soaked with Harry's blood. He had seen the man too near to death to feel comfortable about his odds of surviving it.

"I'm sorry, Harry." He thought that felt like the best way to start. "I want you to do whatever you feel comfortable with, but I do feel that I should tell you I think this will be too much of a strain on you while you're still getting better."

"What if I never get better?" The way that Harry looked him in the eye so seriously when he said that made him feel very uncomfortable all of a sudden.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asked a bit nervously.

"It just means that I might never get better," Harry answered, shrugging his shoulders a bit and turning his attention back to the mirror. "If I start putting my life on hold while I wait to get better, I might never live. What if this is the last denndi to ever exist? I can't just pluck it off and throw it away. This is a good thing. I can do this."

"Let me carry it," Wilfred blurted out next. "I'll be fine. I'll sit at home and watch the telly and make sure nothing happens to it. You said it has to move anyway, right? Attach it to me."

"Oh, Grandfather, you are wonderful," Harry said kindly, smiling a true smile. "But it wouldn't survive on human blood. It's feeding off of the time energy in my blood as well as the blood itself. They need the blood of a Time Lord. That's why they're almost extinct."

"What about the Doctor?"

"The dangers for the Doctor would be the same, really. And if we're using my 'getting better' as a factor, then it still doesn't help because he's what's making me better. Playing host to a denndi would limit his ability to control me, and what if I damaged it during an attack? I'm not clueless when it comes to medicine, but I don't think I'd be able to repair the kind of damage I could cause." Harry stood up tall, his face set firmly in his decision. "Besides, once they start turning pink it means they've absorbed too much of the blood. It's synced to me now and if it takes a new host it could die. I'll be fine."

Wilfred wanted to argue. He wanted to tell Harry how foolish it was to make such assumptions. He wanted to tell him what he saw on that terrible day when he listened to one Harry shouting at him through the locked front door while another one slowly bled to death upstairs. But he didn't understand the laws of time, and the Doctor had been very clear on what was safe to say and what wasn't.

So, as much as it pained him, he simply nodded his head. "Whatever you say, my boy."

After giving Harry a couple of minutes to make absolutely certain that he was happy with his decision, Wilfred left to fetch the Doctor. The other man looked up at him long and hard, slowly chewing his mouthful of eggs and swallowing before finally saying something.

"What kind of bug?"

"A little white one," he answered unhappily. "Well, it's turning pink now."

That certainly had the Doctor's attention. "On his neck?"

"He said you had to move it . . . so that it could bury itself in, or something."

"What?" the Doctor voice went up in pitch and a grin spread across his face. "You've got to be kidding me. No way! Did you actually see it, or did he just tell you this?"

"I saw it. He didn't even know it was there until I pointed it out."

"Wilfred," the Doctor said slowly. "That little bug that you saw is something called a denndi—"

"Yeah, that's what Harry said."

"And you are probably the first human in the history of the universe to have seen one," the Doctor continued, the grin on his face spreading as he spoke. "Well, you're probably the first  _person_ , period, to have seen one for hundreds of years."

"Yes, I understand it's very special."

"It's very special," the Doctor confirmed. "Come on. Let's go see it."

The Doctor half walked and half jogged his way to the bedrooms, with Wilfred following closely behind. He called out for Boris and the shadow appeared beside them as they hurried along and Wilf couldn't help feeling a bit embarrassed that he was behaving so sulkily when something that was apparently rather exciting was happening.

When they entered the bedroom, Harry had traded his pajamas for some proper suit trousers, though he had left his shirt off. He didn't say anything when they came in, just indicated to his neck with his hand and looked at the Doctor a bit nervously.

"Aww, look what you've got!" the Doctor said excitedly as he hurried up for a better look. "Never thought I'd see a denndi again. Hello, you little beauty!"

"But it is a parasite, isn't it?" Wilfred pointed out, feeling a bit annoyed that the Doctor's first impulse wasn't to think about Harry's health. "I mean, I understand it's rare and everything, but he's got an ugly little bug parasite thingy and it's drinking his blood."

The Doctor looked back at him and frowned a bit. "Well . . .  _yeah_ , if you wanted to look at it that way," he said, sounding a little disturbed by Wilfred's outburst. "But it's  _life_ , Wilfred. Look at it; it's perfectly developed  _life_. It's like magic. Even if you're not excited about, you should be happy for Harry. Think about that lab of his—he spent years building it and the whole thing is dedicated to growing and sustaining life. This is the sort of thing he lives for."

Wilfred glanced up at Harry's face. There was definitely a sort of glee about him but, at the same time, he looked quite nervous. It only occurred to him now that maybe Harry was nervous because he was hoping for Wilf's approval.

The Doctor suddenly followed Wilf's eyes to look at Harry, and his face dropped. "Harry, I'm sorry," he said quickly. "I just assumed because Wilf said you wanted me to move it. Did you . . . do you want me to just take it off?"

"No," Harry said quickly.

"Ohh . . ." The Doctor took a little step back and eyed Harry carefully. "You're worried about having attacks when it gets bigger."

"Exactly," Wilfred agreed. "It's dangerous. What if he doesn't know what it is and tries to cut it off? He'll bleed to death!"

"He's not worried about that, Wilf," the Doctor said quietly, turning to look at him seriously now. "He's worried he'll think that it's Berran."

Why hadn't he thought of that? Wilf could see by the look in Harry's eyes and his unusual silence that the Doctor was right. He glanced at the scar on Harry's arm—a wound he had inflicted upon himself in a desperate attempt to sustain his child with his own blood after they had been grotesquely sewn together. In the confused state of an attack it was entirely possible that the weight and feel of something bound to his very skin could transport him back to those memories. Especially considering that the denndi would be attached in the same place that Berran had been.

There was no point in trying to change Harry's mind about anything. Wilfred had already seen the future and the future had shown him Harry with a well-developed denndi attached to him. All he could really do was try to make it easier on him.

"We'll help you, Harry," Wilfred promised quietly. "Whatever you want to do, you'll always have the Doctor and me to help you."

Harry smiled a bit, despite looking nervous. "Okay," he said quietly. "Let's do this. I don't want this thing growing on my neck and pulling me over every time I lean too far to one side."

The Doctor gave a merry little chuckle and pulled out the little black medical kit from his pocket. "Then let's do it. Boris!" the Doctor waved his hand to summon the shadow, and Boris appeared as a small condensed cloud beside him. "I'm going to try to remove it without damaging anything. I want you to get in there and help ease it out."

"Just be careful," Wilfred muttered.

It only took the Doctor a minute or two to remove the denndi, holding it carefully with a pair of tweezers that were attached to his medical kit. "Here it is," he said in an excited whisper, holding it up for Harry to see properly, watching its tiny legs wiggle as it looked desperately for something to reattach to. "The first known denndi in hundreds of years, Harry, and it's yours. We can still remove it later if you change your mind . . . okay?"

And with a quick nod of his head, Harry sealed his future. Wilfred felt a little sick to his stomach watching it, knowing full well what that tiny little tick would lead to and being unable to do a thing about it. Were they still hiding somewhere in the TARDIS? Were they both still alive and well? What would he ever do with the Doctor, or with himself, if Harry didn't survive the day that was to come?

But he looked at the way Harry and the Doctor smiled at each other and watched the Doctor kiss him with no concern of Wilfred watching them. The Doctor wouldn't instruct him to do something that would put this happiness in jeopardy. He watched them be happy together and decided that, at least for today, he would trust the Doctor and follow his instructions by not saying anything.

And tomorrow—or whichever tomorrow it would be—he would just have to hope that the Doctor wasn't wrong.


	50. Jack

Within a week, the odd little parasite on Harry's chest was about the size of a blueberry and had lost its legs, beginning to sink beneath his flesh instead. Within a month, it had grown to the size of a golf ball and was becoming quite difficult to ignore. The bigger it got, the more people fussed over Harry's health and the Doctor had been altering random items such as ping pong balls and egg cups to act as shields for it.

Jack thought that the whole thing didn't seem quite right. The Doctor seemed far too happy about some creepy little bug, while Harry seemed far too nervous, Wilfred was far too worried, and Donna was disturbingly quiet. He also found it incredibly odd that whenever someone asked a question about the denndi, the Doctor passed up the chance to show off how smart he was and would let Harry answer instead.

As far as Jack knew, the Doctor only avoided answering questions for one of two reasons: because it was too painful to talk about, or because it was too frightening to talk about. He was certainly avoiding talking about it, but it seemed as though he did it cheerfully.

They did some travelling, though most of it was fairly low-key because everyone was worried about Harry. Then came the day when they had gone to watch a jousting tournament and Harry disappeared, only to have been discovered forcibly participating in the swordsman competitions.

It had been funny to watch though. The Doctor had mentioned before that Harry's telepathic abilities gave him some hypnotic power over the simple minded, but he hadn't had a chance to really see it until that day. If he hadn't swayed the entire crowd in his favour, Harry surely would have been arrested for jumping into the competition without any proof of nobility. They might not have even found him had the crowd not been chanting "Harold! Harold!" Jack's first instinct had been to leap up onto the stands and start chanting with the rest of them.

Harry actually fought well and emerged with nothing more than mud stains and a bruised shin. Both the Doctor and Wilfred had been absolutely furious though, even though Harry had been very quick to remind them that the swords were blunted. Jack hadn't really seen Wilfred properly angry before, and he never would have guessed in a hundred years that he would first see it being directed at Harry of all people, but the old man could inspire fear with just his eyes in the right circumstances.

When Harry threw down his sword and returned to them from the ring, all hell broke loose. It was difficult to imagine what it was about a silly bit of play-fighting that could get the others worked up so badly, but apparently this denndi thing was a bigger deal than Jack thought it was. Harry was practically dragged by the Doctor to a medical room in the TARDIS to get checked up, and Jack couldn't believe how quickly the tension in the room was building.

"What were you thinking?" the Doctor muttered under his breath as he investigated the quickly swelling bruise on Harry's leg.

"That was dangerous, lad," Wilfred said sternly. "If you'd been hit in the chest—"

"Oh, please," Harry groaned with a roll of his eyes. "Those people are so primitive that their minds practically scream every thought out into the universe. I knew everything that idiot was planning to do!"

"You still could have been hit!" the Doctor barked back. "You could have slipped and fallen. You could—"

"I could have  _slipped and fallen_?" Harry repeated in disbelief. "I'm sorry. When exactly did I become a senior citizen living with the constant fear of  _slipping and falling_?"

"You're nearly a thousand years old, Harry," Donna pointed out, much to Jack's surprise.

"Can I just remind everyone that, within the past few months of my life, I have been inside a building while it exploded, burned my own life force, broken my leg, survived and recovered from a chemical poison, and been shot? I hardly think I need to worry about the consequences of falling the whole three feet to the ground!"

After Wilfred gave them a pleading look, Jack, Donna, and Shaun all left the room, though they heard every word of the fight that followed afterwards. They heard every last part about Harry being reckless and stupid, and every returned argument in which Harry pointed out that he was going mad being treated like a china doll. After a while, Wilfred came out of the room, his face a little red and determinedly silent. He marched past them to go to some other part of the ship and, though they didn't really hear him raise his voice, Jack just couldn't believe how upset Wilf had gotten. They heard the fight continue but no longer understood it because the Doctor and Harry had reverted back to their native tongue.

Jack hadn't thought it was possible, but the fight actually erupted into a worse one after Wilfred left. He supposed that they probably wouldn't lay everything on the table when someone else was in the room but, now that they were alone and able to speak in their own way, it sounded like they were verbally ripping strips of flesh off of each other.

Several times Donna said something about going in to break it up, but both Jack and Shaun told her to leave them alone. She was clearly getting a bit emotional over the whole thing, so Shaun put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her tight.

"If it sounds like it's going to get physical, I'll go in," Jack assured her. "But, as it is, they're just yelling and that's entirely their business. I wouldn't even be sitting here if I didn't have to worry about Harry slipping into Terminator mode."

So they sat for a while longer, awkwardly glancing about the room as they waited for the shouting to stop. He was surprised to find that it was sometimes difficult to tell whose voice was whose when they weren't speaking English, but it was undoubtedly the Doctor who spat the final words with such venom that no one needed to speak the language to understand the cruelty in them.

A heavy silence followed, everyone twisting in their seats to look at the door that the two Time Lords were hidden behind. It was quiet enough that just the sound of them all breathing seemed unnaturally loud and Jack could easily imagine the Doctor and Harry on the other side of that wall, just staring at each other like a pair of wolves.

If it hadn't been so quiet he never would have heard it, but Harry said something. In a deadly growl of a whisper he uttered one single sentence. Footsteps alerted them all to twist back the other way in their seats, pretending that they hadn't been staring at the door.

"Harry, wait," the Doctor's voice called out as the door opened and Harry stepped out. "Just wait a minute, will you?"

Jack glanced up at Harry's face and saw nothing but fury in his eyes. Harry completely ignored the Doctor and instead marched up to Jack, grabbed him by the collar, and hauled him out of his seat.

"What the hell? Harry, what are you doing?" Jack sputtered out a couple of questions as he was literally dragged from the room, but he decided not to fight it.

He glanced back and saw Donna staring at him with wide eyes full of worry. She could take care of the Doctor, Jack decided. If anybody was going to be dragged by a mad man full of rage then it was probably best for the man who couldn't die to go.

He'd never been inside the room that Harry dragged him to, but there were dozens of rooms he'd never been in before. This one looked like a storage room—more specifically, the storage room for people to throw temper tantrums in. There was broken furniture, broken mirrors, torn up paintings, and he even saw what looked like some dried droplets of blood on the floor.

Harry quickly released Jack's collar and wasted no time in marching over to a nearby grandfather clock and pulling it over. The almighty noise of the clock hitting the ground was ear shattering—glass smashed, chimes clanged together, the wood splintered and cracked while the debris shot across the floor.

Harry had a grim but satisfied look on his face when he looked back up at Jack. "That's my first contribution to this room," he said, gesturing with his hand at the piles of destroyed objects scattered around them. "Everybody thinks he's got it together so well, but this is what he does when he gets emotional. Do you know what kind of people do that? Crazy people do that."

"Well . . . you did just break that clock," Jack pointed out.

"I never said that I wasn't crazy as well," Harry stepped over the broken clock and approached Jack quickly. "Alright, now hit me."

"What?"

"I want you to hit me. Preferably in the face."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Jack chuckled a little, rather confused about what the point of all this was. "Are you going to hit me back?"

"No."

"Then why would you ask me to do that?"

"Because if there's anyone here who won't forget that I am still the Master, it's you." He started jigging on the spot and swinging his arms a bit as if he were preparing for a fight. "On my planet I was a God damned legend. There are dozens of worlds out there where the people will cower at the sound of my name but  _here_  everyone is so convinced that I'm fragile that I get told to be careful I don't  _fall_. And it's driving me crazy. So, I want you to remember every horrible and heartless thing that I ever did to you and hit me in the fucking face."

He meant it too. There was a bit of madness in those eyes that told him Harry really, really meant it. Everything he knew about Harry's life as the Master told him that the man was a man of bloodshed and he imagined how he himself would react to be treated the way Harry was being treated. What would he do if he had been told to sit down and have a cup of tea, to go to bed early to rest, to not spend too much time in the sunlight in case he got exhausted? How would he handle being constantly told to do nothing for the sake of his health?

And he thought that he would probably wind up standing in front of the most likely person to do it when he told them to hit him in the fucking face.

"Alright," he agreed quickly. "But hit me back."

"I was hoping you'd say that," Harry grinned. "Just don't hit the denndi. The rest of me is fair game but, seriously, don't touch it."

Jack remembered the fist fight they'd had before and tried to learn from it. Harry was fast and savage and did not leave time to recover before he struck again, so Jack made sure to never stop moving. All the pieces of shattered glass and ceramic that carpeted the room crunched and slid beneath their feet, almost making a musical sound. After a minute or two, he realized that Harry was pushing him towards a corner so, when a fist hit him hard in the ribs, he struck back and hit the Time Lord right in the stomach to knock the wind out of him. He had hoped it would stun Harry long enough to get a good rush at him and shove him towards the other wall, but he had hoped for a little too much. He barely pushed him back a foot before Harry's knee hit him in the chest and a fist connected with his brow not a second later.

Jack nearly fell to the floor, but Harry caught him by his shirt, pulled him back up, and successfully drove him into the corner. Harry shoved him hard, so that his back landed with a thump against the wall, and he looked up to see the proud smirk on Harry's face as he came back in to hit him again. Jack found himself grinning when he realized the mistake Harry had made by creating space between them and he kicked out, connecting his foot with Harry's hip and sending him back. He decided to take a leaf from the Time Lord's book and didn't hesitate to make his next move, launching himself forward to knock Harry to the floor and pin him down. He straddled him, trying to prevent the other man from kicking him as he delivered another blow to his face, but even that wasn't enough to make Harry give up. He felt a fist strike his ribs, certain that at least two of them were cracking beneath the force of it, when something else caught his attention.

"What the hell are you doing!?"

That was the Doctor's voice. Jack froze with his fist in the air and he felt Harry's arms drop to the floor—he was too nervous to look but he really,  _really_  hoped that it wasn't because Harry had just passed out.

"Get off of him!"

"Now, before you get mad at me," Jack said quickly as he scrambled off of Harry. "He was definitely winning until three seconds ago."

Jack looked down and felt enormously relieved that the man on the floor was still awake. He offered his hand, which Harry took, and he helped pull the Time Lord to his feet. He suddenly realized how stupid it was to think that fighting for the fun of it was a good idea considering that fighting with blunted swords was what had caused all this trouble in the first place.

But Harry was smirking beside him. "You wanna have a go?" he asked, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. "I haven't really fought you in a while."

"No," the Doctor answered quickly, looking perfectly horrified. "What are you thinking? Why would you—"

"Because I'm still me!" Harry spat angrily. "I'm not going to live in a glass case because you can't trust me to take care of myself. I'm not a walking denndi, I'm not your prisoner, and I'm not one these things that you like to break when you're angry—not even with words."

Jack suddenly felt very uncomfortable being in the room during this obviously private conversation. He tried to step away but Harry shot an arm out and grabbed him by his shirt, keeping him firmly where he was.

"I didn't mean what I said," the Doctor said quietly. "I'm sorry. I don't know why I said it. I was just being stupid."

"Yeah, you were," Harry still sounded angry but his voice came down in volume and his grip on Jack loosened a little. "And I  _know_  it was stupid to pick up that sword and I know it was stupid to fight in here but you can just  _say_  that without treating me like some handicapped child. Don't drag me home and use Grandfather to gang up on me when you can just  _tell_  me that I'm being stupid!"

Suddenly the Doctor smiled. "It was pretty stupid."

"Yes, it was," Harry growled back, releasing Jack's shirt. "And my face hurts now."

"Well, that's your own doing," the Doctor said, smiling a little more now. "I  _am_  sorry, Harry."

"Yeah. Me too."

"Is the denndi okay?"

_ Really _ ? After all that, the Doctor's first question was to fuss over a  _bug_? "Doctor—"

"No, it's fine," Harry interrupted, patting Jack's shoulder to indicate that he could back down. "Jack was careful not to hit it. Maybe a bit shaken up, but you know how tough they are."

"Good."

Then, when he saw the way they smiled at each other, everything clicked together in Jack's head.

"Wait a minute," he muttered, glancing from one Time Lord to the other.

The Doctor had been protective over Harry since he first came on the ship, but it wasn't this bad until the denndi appeared. He'd been told about the dangers of carrying one and Wilfred was terribly worried about Harry, but he didn't notice until now that the Doctor was more worried about the denndi itself. Even Harry, with all his resentment towards being treated like someone frail, fretted over the little bug sometimes. And now, after an argument that sounded so terrible, it was all over with a simple apology?

Suddenly they were smiling at each other like they were so in love.

"That's not a bug, is it?"

An endangered species, yes. Extremely rare, yes. But not just some bug. How could a parasite that could only survive off the blood of a Time Lord even still be alive if all the Time Lords had been gone for so long? Gallifrey didn't exist anymore, so where did the denndi come from?

"But you guys were surprised that it was there," he found himself stammering a bit. "That's supposed to be impossible."

"Supposed to be," Harry answered calmly, picking out a tiny piece of glass that had found its way into his arm. "But I'd just had an attack where I was trying to use my regeneration energy. My body was doing all sorts of things I wasn't in control of and I was pumped full of paternal instinct."

"I should have known better," the Doctor said with an odd sort of chuckle. "But I suppose I was being stupid."

Jack stared at the funny little bump hidden underneath Harry's shirt as the idea sunk in. Suddenly it kind of made sense as to why there was so much fuss over something so tiny and why Harry acting a little reckless had somehow blown up into such a fight.

"Jesus Christ," he said breathlessly. "I just beat up a pregnant man."


	51. Harry

Grandfather cried. Harry had intended to keep the truth about the denndi a secret for a few weeks more, just in case it failed to establish a proper connection to his blood and died, but there just wasn't any point. Jack worked it out on his own and Donna already knew—he didn't want to ask her why and he didn't want the Doctor investigating so he just said that he told her. Donna never said a word against it and, though he looked at them both with eyes full of suspicion, the Doctor chose to believe them.

Wilfred apologized profusely for being bossy and for initially trying to talk him out of keeping the denndi. "I just thought it was this rubbish little bug and I really didn't see the point in going through that much trouble for it," the old man cried out as he pulled Harry into his seventh hug. "If you had told me—if I only knew! Oh my boys, a  _baby_! Oh, my first great grandbaby!" He turned quickly to hug the Doctor and paused when he saw the surprised look on his face. "O-or not. I don't want to—"

"No, no, Wilfred, don't be silly," the Doctor said quickly and then smiled warmly. "The Grandfather is who are, and who you always ought to be. I would be proud for my . . ." He trailed off, his eyes suddenly going wide and looking a bit glazed over.

"What is it?" Wilfred asked, looking in the same direction the Doctor was to see if he was actually looking at something. "What's wrong, Doctor?"

"I'm, uh . . . Sorry, I just realized . . ." The Doctor swallowed and scratched the back of his neck before looking up to meet eyes with Harry. "I'm gonna be a dad."

Harry supposed everyone had spent so much time focusing on him and on the denndi itself that the Doctor might not have ever stopped to really think about what it meant. But he saw the realization in the Doctor's eyes now—that this child would be as much his as it was Harry's.

And he looked absolutely thrilled.

"You dumbo!" Donna barked, smacking the Doctor's arm. "Are you only just figuring that out? A bit slow, don't you think?"

The Doctor flinched and ducked away from her, but his face broke into an incredibly wide grin. "Wilfred Mott!" he said loudly, stepping back towards Wilfred and taking his hand. "I would be honoured for my children to call you Grandfather."

"Did you say 'children'?" Harry asked incredulously, though he couldn't keep a straight face while he did it. "I was under the impression that I was only carrying one."

" _Well_ , right now, yeah . . . Oh, shut up!"

To his surprise, the Doctor didn't just kiss him in front of the others, he took a proper hold of him and kissed him. Arms were wrapped around him and everything. Harry felt the sheer giddiness coursing through the Doctor's mind into his own and quickly realized that the Doctor was actually thinking about what he had just said. He could see it, sitting at the front of the Doctor's mind, plain as day:  _children_. Suddenly it had sunk in for the Doctor that he was going to be a father and his imagination had jumped years into the future.

A mild mental feel around the room told Harry that the others were thinking of similar futures. Wilfred was imagining bouncing babies on his knee and reading bed time stories. Shaun and Donna were both thinking about having their own baby, except Donna was imagining her children running around a yard with their 'cousins'. And Jack—well, he had been very hesitant to peer too closely into Jack's mind since their fight in the tantrum room, but he thought it might be safe to look now. Jack's mind was full of bittersweet happiness as he thought about holding the hand of a small boy who would call him Uncle Jack.

As strange as the situation was, and as frightening as it had been at the start, Harry realized that everyone was happy about it. Not a single person was thinking that it was a bad idea or that Harry might not be fit as a parent. No one was worried about how this child might grow up or if it would have enough support. They were all thinking about a bright and wonderful future together, as a family.

When did he suddenly get himself a family?

They went out that night to celebrate, though Harry was sure that it was only because the reality of it had just sunk in for the Doctor and he just had to let his excitement out somehow. They were bombarded with all sorts of questions: how the process worked, had they thought of any names, when would the baby be due? Harry found himself feeling rather exhausted quickly so the Doctor obliged when it came to most of that information.

"Names are very important on our planet," the Doctor explained, happily sipping away at his wine between sentences. "Traditionally, on Gallifrey, parents might pick out a few of their favourite names to choose from but you don't actually decide on one until the baby is separated from the carrier and you can get a feel of their emotional waves as an individual. Time Lords live for a very,  _very_  long time so you've got to make sure that you get the name right."

"I always thought you had a good name," Harry muttered absent mindedly. "It suits you really."

"And it's too early now," the Doctor continued as though Harry hadn't said anything, completely ignoring the sudden looks of interest on the faces of everyone else in the group. "But when the denndi has properly established its connecting blood system under Harry's skin, its brain will start developing and when that happens—ohh, it's marvelous! Especially because Harry's so clever when it comes to telepathy, it'll work much better—they'll be able to communicate! Think of it! Little unborn baby, doesn't even have a proper face yet, but it'll be able to reach out its tiny little thoughts and say 'hello, dad!'. Well, not really say 'hello'. It'd be more like just a feeling, like happy or curious or even just hungry."

The man was practically bouncing in his seat and everyone was just eating up his words. Donna squealed in delight when the Doctor mentioned that the telepathic connection would also make it possible to know the baby's sex early on and said she couldn't wait to go shopping for baby clothes.

"I just want to get the little shoes," Shaun said suddenly. "All the rest of it goes over my head a bit, but I like the little shoes."

"Ohh, Harry," the Doctor suddenly turned towards him and nudged him lightly. "Do you know how tiny our baby's feet are? Right now? Go on, guess how big they are."

The Doctor had been loving doing this sort of thing.

"I don't know," he answered with a shrug of his shoulders. "How big?"

"A pin head," the Doctor said gleefully. "Its got feet the size of pin heads."

It was unbelievable to him how much energy the Doctor could have at times. He was like that for the whole evening. Talking at a million miles a minute, repeatedly bringing up how amazing the whole process was and the places that he couldn't wait to take his child. He told them about the Gallifreyan words used to distinguish two parents—Harry would be called Tokrah, which was the word for the carrier, while the Doctor would be Banni.

"Ohh, Banni," Donna repeated happily. "I like the way that sounds."

"I do too," the Doctor answered excitedly.

Names got flung back and forth and Harry and the Doctor agreed with some to be polite, though they both knew that they would never use them. Wilfred asked if they might get a house and settle on Earth for a while, though everyone else knew that the Doctor would never leave the shelter of his precious TARDIS for a house. Jack started asking about building baby furniture, a conversation which Shaun had an awful lot to contribute to as he was so handy with DIY projects, and Harry just sat back while everyone talked around him.

It was amazing, he thought. They all knew that bad times were coming. As much as he had been trying to avoid learning too much about the future, it seemed clear that everyone had seen or heard  _something_. There were bad days ahead, maybe even devastating days, but this was still a happy time.

As weeks flew by, there were times when it was so much easier than he expected, and sometimes it was so much worse. The bigger the denndi became, the less he felt he had control over himself. It felt a lot like it had when he first came back to life—he was just  _so_  hungry all the time and it seemed that his mind and emotions could slip away from him at any moment. Most of all, he felt aggressive.

The Doctor told him that it was a common thing for a male host to feel more aggressive than usual because of the strong instinct to protect the denndi and that he shouldn't worry about it. But he did. He was becoming increasingly aware of how long it had been since he killed anything. There were times when anyone could do the silliest thing and, for whatever reason, he would think it was incredibly annoying and catch himself fantasizing about throttling them. The stronger the feelings the became, the more he worried that he would have an attack, and maybe nothing would stop him from violently acting out.

The only relief he got was a bizarre game that he and Jack had gotten into, much to everyone else's despair. It made the Doctor furious, but that really just made it more fun. They would punch each other at the most random of times. Whenever Harry thought Jack wasn't expecting it and especially if Jack didn't know he was in the room, he would run up and punch him. Usually just in the shoulder or the ribs, but occasionally he would get him in the face just to mix it up, and Jack would do the same to him. It baffled the others to no end, but it was entertaining for them at least.

There were other changes too. People still fretted over him a bit too much, though it was much better than before. Mostly it was the sheer amount of attention he got that was getting uncomfortable. It took nearly another two months before their numerous companions settled down a bit and stopped asking him every three seconds if he wanted anything or what his thoughts were on some baby-related topic or another. Even when the others settled down, the Doctor didn't.

The man was ecstatic beyond imagination. Sometimes his energy and enthusiasm was a bit too much to handle but it did have its perks. The Doctor had been quick to offer shoulder rubs, was willing to change plans at a moment's notice if he thought it would make Harry happy, and even brought him breakfast in bed a couple of times. On top of it all, the Doctor couldn't seem to keep his hands away. He was regularly hopping in while Harry was in the shower or waking him up in the night with either exploring hands or lips, or both. It had even reached the point where he would slyly caress Harry's shevra while other people were in the room until the Doctor excited himself too much and would just take Harry's hand, excuse them to the others, and drag him off to some secluded area for a quick round.

Harry was glad that the Doctor's sexual appetite had increased so much, but he wasn't very pleased with his habit of touching what Harry considered to be a very ugly growth on his chest. Even as he tried to get some work done in his lab, he found the Doctor's arms snaking around him from behind and the first thing those hands did was slide up his body to caress the denndi.

"Oh, go away," he muttered, pushing the Doctor's hands away from his chest.

"Not a chance," the Doctor answered playfully and resumed touching Harry where ever he liked.

"I don't really understand," he sighed. "What exactly it is about a bit of old lumpy blob on my chest that you find so attractive."

"Come on, it's beautiful," the Doctor grinned as he pulled Harry around to start undoing the buttons on his shirt. "That's you and me right there. You love me so much that you subconsciously decided you wanted to have a family with me, and that little bit of old lumpy blob is the proof. What's  _not_  attractive about it?"

"The lumpy blobby part," Harry answered almost sulkily, though he helped the Doctor remove his shirt just the same. He'd learned by now that a bit of complaining actually kept the Doctor happy because it helped him feel that there was something he could make better. "Besides, where's my proof? I don't see any lumpy bits on you."

"I could always take the next one," the Doctor answered with a bit of a shrug as his hands dove at Harry's trousers to wrestle open his belt. "In the meantime there's not much I can do.  _Well_  . . . except maybe get married. Wanna do that?"

"What?" He grabbed at the Doctor's wrists to stop him, but the other Time Lord wasn't having it. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, shut up. Wilfred told me about that scarf you bought at Christmas," the Doctor said casually, pushing Harry's hands off and trying to get his trousers undone again. "There's only one reason that a Time Lord who would complain Antarctica is too hot would buy a scarf and that is for nothing less than a Binding Ceremony. I'm not stupid. Unless I'm wrong, in which case this could be embarrassing. Should I be embarrassed?"

"No." He suddenly found himself speechless. How typical of the Doctor to think it was appropriate to talk about something so important as if he were only discussing a lunch date. The man was perfectly mad.

"Good. There you are then!" the Doctor finally succeeded in his task and Harry's trousers dropped to the floor. "Now, do you want to turn around or shall I?"


	52. The Doctor

The Doctor couldn't even remember the last time he'd done this with anyone. It wasn't every day that you were given a full access trip into someone else's mind—a complete infusion of two souls. Once, when he was very, very young, he had sat with Harry in the clearing in the woods and tried this, just to see what it was like. It was quite frightening the first time and it was really a bit sloppy, too much random noise and thoughts flying about and they both had a terrible headache for hours afterwards. But not this time.

They'd had time to adjust to each other and learn more about how their minds operated. With every telepathic connection and every trace of narin they had shared, their minds had grown accustomed to each other and learned to fit together seamlessly. Now the narin took hold without resistance and the transition was smooth and natural—just like slipping beneath the surface of water.

A small part of the Doctor’s mind was aware of the physical world, but it hardly mattered. There was something cold and solid against his back, which told him he was on the floor, and some distant clattering noise meant something had been knocked over, but that world was too far away to pay any mind.

This world felt like warm water washing over his skin, flowing around him and the room in a liquid embrace. The smell of it reminded him of the wet mildew smell of walking through an old forest, surrounded by the rot of old trees feeding the new. He could smell copper too, sharp and strong—or maybe it was blood? And now and then, he could smell a tendril of smoke drifting past.

If he focused on the physical world, where their bodies were acting independently of them, he could feel Harry's mouth connected to his own, but he couldn't taste the narin. Instead, he tasted salt and gin and the faintest trace of cinnamon.

His ears filled with the sound of drums—a sound that might have worried him once. But these drums were not a call to war. The sound he heard drummed with four beats, but it was fast and joyful, like a Time Lord's heartbeat beating wildly with happiness. Other sounds joined in until the drumming was only a part of a symphony. He heard the passionate music of a cello, the echo of children laughing, and the merry songs of birds singing for their mates. He felt the vibrations of that grand orchestra rolling through his entire body, lighting up his nerves with life. And he felt inspired.

When the Doctor opened his eyes to that beautiful world, he saw the shimmer of silver leaves and a mountain top rising to the sky. He saw stars so far above him, so very far away that it seemed impossible to even think of ever reaching them, but that wouldn't stop him from trying. He saw lava flowing harmlessly at his feet with all manner of plant life bursting forth from beneath the molten rock—tenacious life that refused to be defeated. Everything was moving and changing and growing constantly. Even the mountain seemed to be changing shape and the stars seemed to drift a little closer.

It was almost too much. His hearts were racing and he couldn't seem to breathe, his mind felt so full of wonder. But then he felt it. In that ancient silver forest that felt like water and smelled like blood, surrounded by the beauty of life and the sounds of memory and ambition, he felt it. Calm and controlled, despite the instinctual fear—like an old and scarred predatory animal, prowling through the trees. It was powerful and capable of a savage rage beyond knowing, but calm and calculating. He felt the eyes of that wild creature watching him, with all their fury and all their patience, and, for once, he was not afraid of it. His was the hand that it dare not bite, out of love more than anything else.

Somewhere, a wall broke down and two worlds collided. The world that flooded his mind was one that he had spent his whole life inside, but he had rarely seen it. A child of Gallifrey can only truly see their own soul through the connection with another, and this would be his first time in centuries.

An icy wind cut through the water—warm and cold, dancing together over his skin. The smell of gasoline and rain joined that of smoke and forest, and the smell of copper grew so strong that it was unmistakably the scent of blood now. Honey joined salt, pineapples and oranges mixed with the taste of gin, and, to The Doctor’s great amusement, a touch of vanilla blended with cinnamon. Those stars that seemed so far away burst with life and surrounded him—the beautiful colours of nebulas drifted around in clouds and comets sped past and left a turbulent wake. And there, amongst all that beauty, raged a planet in eternal flames—the scar that Gallifrey left upon his soul when it burned.

The Doctor felt the eyes of another animal in this mad and ever-changing world now, but this one he feared to face. This animal was a trickster that played people for fools. It would come forth like a friend, curious and happy and wanting to play, until it turned on whoever had not been clever enough to run away. He felt the adrenaline coursing through it and its need to move, to learn. Part of him wanted to frighten away the first creature before it, too, was bitten with those deadly teeth, until he realized that the prowler he had felt before was wiser than he. It would never run, nor back down, nor provoke, but it would certainly protect itself. That animal was not afraid to bite back.

Then finally, he heard it.

The first time he let Harry into his mind, the boy had admitted that the Doctor's song had made him sad. A couple of centuries later when he invited in the only woman to ever experience his soul, she cried later and told him how terribly lonely that sound had been. The voice that sang to him in his sleep and in his darkest hours was so beautiful to him and yet so sad, because he recognized it as that of a machine. The TARDIS was the only being in the universe that had ever managed to properly work its way into him. The only being that was ever there long enough, that loved him long enough to leave a permanent mark was the soul of the TARDIS herself. Her song echoed all the way back through time and had been a part of him his entire life. Always singing alone. Always there to remind him that everyone leaves before long.

But his song had ended. The Ood just forgot to tell him that a new and much more wonderful song would take its place.

A whole crowd of voices joined those of the laughing children and the singing birds. There were so many and yet he could hear each one. Donna sang for him, and Wilfred, and Rose. He could hear Jack, Martha, even the Ood themselves, and so many voices of those he knew he had yet to meet. There were the voices of those he had saved, even if he had never known their names, and of those who had saved him. Harry's voice was there too, loud and clear, and his music complimented the Doctor's song as though they were meant to be heard together.

After centuries of pain and loneliness, the Doctor’s song had finally ended and he found himself standing amongst the joyful melody of all those he loved. Most of all, he listened to that one little voice that was too small to hear properly yet—the voice of someone unborn, calling out to him from somewhere nearby.

Now it really was too much. His hearts felt like they might give out in the overwhelming perfection of it all and he knew that, in that physical world he had left behind, there were tears rolling down his cheeks. How had he lived so long without knowing this? How had he ever survived without experiencing this kind of bliss? It was a world so beautiful that it felt like looking at the sun during an eclipse—too stunning to look away in fear of missing it, but too powerful to stop and gaze into its divine wonder. He needed to look away. He needed out before it consumed him.

The world grew stronger and more vibrant until its beauty blinded him, its song rendered him deaf, and his every sense was heightened to the point of nothingness. He was alive and dead at the same time. He felt the shared energy of two beings course through him like a bolt of lightning and, with a burst of life, it all broke away.

Like waking from a dream, the songs and the forests and the stars all faded away, and he found himself looking up at the most beautiful eyes he'd ever seen. His body was shaking but so was Harry’s, so he decided not to worry about it. He couldn't speak anyway nor move, not yet anyway. That overwhelming world separated and drifted back into the minds they belonged in, and let the physical world take over once more.

The cold floor of the lab beneath his back became real again and the warmth of Harry's skin was the simplest of comforts. He could hear them both breathing hard, and hear his hearts trying desperately to calm down in his chest. His eyes travelled to the denndi attached to Harry and suddenly felt more love for it than he could have ever imagined. Parts of himself that he thought had died so long ago with his family were quietly emerging again and, for the first time in what seemed like forever, he felt whole.

"Doctor," Harry said, panting to catch his breath. "Are you okay?"

"Oh yeah," he grinned, finding the strength to raise his hands and touch the face before him. "Are you?"

Harry nodded, though it was a little hesitant. A complete soul infusion was extremely tiring and difficult for even the strongest minds to bear. The Doctor imagined it would take Harry a few hours, if not a couple of days, to feel completely himself again. He would have to enlist Wilfred's help to make sure that Harry didn't exert himself for a little while.

"Alright," Harry whispered. "Now I can marry you."

"What, you mean you weren't going to before? Oh, Harry, I'm heartbroken."

He had just begun laughing at the amused look on Harry's face and trying to escape the punishing pokes to the ribs when there was the sound of an impact. Harry cried out in surprise and shot forward, slightly squishing the Doctor beneath his weight in the process, followed by the sound of very fast footsteps.

"Son of a bitch!" Harry gasped before jumping upright to look out the open door of the lab, still swinging from the speed of which it had been run through. "Jack, what the hell!? I'm going to kill you!"

And Harry tore after him, stark naked and sporting a lovely red mark on the back of his ribs where Jack had punched him, leaving the Doctor laughing on the floor until he was out of breath.


	53. Jack

Jack and Donna had decided to join the Doctor and Harry in the Bio Lab for a bit of work, but they didn't get within twenty feet of the dome before something stopped them in their tracks. Neither of them could quite put a finger on it, but there was something turbulent in the air, something pushing them away from the dome. There was nothing physical to be seen or felt, just a heavy and uneasy feeling in the air that told them to go away.

"We shouldn't leave without checking on them," Donna said worriedly, tugging on Jack's sleeve. "What if they've done some kind of stupid experiment that's gone wrong?"

"Alright," Jack agreed quickly. "I'm sure everything's fine but I want you to go back outside, just in case."

There was a sudden burst in that strange energy, strong enough that Jack actually took a step back. Donna gave a surprised shout and was quick to hurry off, calling out that she would prop the doors open so that Jack wouldn't get stuck in the decontamination chamber if he had to run out. He crept up on the dome, noticing now that the strange energy seemed to be clearing up.

When Jack peeked in the room and saw nothing but clothes on the floor, he thought for the briefest of moments that the Doctor and Harry and somehow vaporized themselves in whatever experiment-gone-wrong scenario they had created. But then he saw the two pairs of feet sticking out from behind the central table and realized what exactly he had walked in on.

At first, he was just going to leave them to it, but then he heard them speaking to each other in Gallifreyan and realized that they had apparently finished. The temptation was just too strong. For weeks now, Jack and Harry had been punching each other when they thought the other was not expecting it. The biggest problem with such a game was that he was playing against a powerful telepath and Harry almost always knew when Jack was coming. He would never expect him now.

The feet on the floor kicked about as the Doctor started laughing and suddenly Jack's mind was set. He rushed inside to find Harry still on top of the Doctor, punched him as hard as he dared in the back of his ribcage, then turned and ran.

He found himself laughing as his feet pounded against the soft, mossy ground towards the exit as Harry called after him, "I'm going to kill you!"

Jack tore through the open decontamination chamber where Donna was waiting on the other side.

"Oh my God, what's happening!?" she shrieked when he nearly flew into her. Then she turned to look back into the lab. "HE'S NAKED!"

"Then don't look!" Harry barked as he ran past her.

Jack was surprised with how fast Harry was catching up and he tried to push himself to run that little bit faster, though it was getting harder because he was laughing at the same time and wasting all his breath. He turned corners frequently, trying to shake the Time Lord off, until he realized that Harry wasn't actually following him anymore. For a second, he thought maybe he'd actually gotten away until he remembered that Harry knew the TARDIS inside and out like the back of his hand and, more importantly, was capable of reading Jack's mind.

Just as that thought sunk in he went to turn another corner and practically ran face first into Harry's fist. It actually knocked him off his feet and he found himself lying flat on the floor, staring up at a grinning and still very naked Time Lord.

"So is it my turn now?" Jack asked cheekily. "I would have just laid down if you had asked me.”

"Keep dreaming, Jack. Give me your coat."

"I'm pretty sure you broke my nose," Jack groaned, sitting up and obediently removing his coat to hand over.

"You'll be fine in a minute."

Jack sat there, holding his palm to his nose to hold back the blood until it healed and smirked as Harry put on his coat and buttoned it up. "I was gonna say that it was worth it for the view, but I actually kinda like the whole naked-under-my-coat thing. I had a boyfriend once who used to do that—very hot."

"Shut up before I hit you again."

"Whatever you say, baby-mama."

Harry punched him again, making sure to hit him squarely in the nose so that, if it wasn't broken before, it was certainly broken now. Jack held his hand over it, feeling it crunch and move as it tried to heal and he watched a smirking Harry walk away in his coat.

Jack's heart had been through a tumultuous storm of emotions for the past several months of his life and it didn't seem to feel like slowing down now. When the Doctor called him that day to ask for his help, he thought that it might be a second chance for him. He was lonely and mourning and completely unsure of what he supposed to do with himself after the terrible losses he'd suffered and suddenly he got a call from the one that got away.

Then he saw Harry on the ship and, worse, realized very quickly that somehow a mass murderer had slipped in from nowhere and stolen the Doctor's heart. Everything changed from winning over the Doctor to saving him from a mad man. Then it changed to saving the mad man himself. Now, it seemed to be changing again.

Whatever people may have thought about him, Jack did have boundaries and lines that he never intended to cross. But, while he could control his actions, he could not control his own emotions. He was still just as infatuated with the Doctor as ever, but now he was seeing Harry in a different light as well. That day in the storage room, when he saw Harry in a truly vulnerable state and realized he had been chosen as the one to be trusted, and then when he actually found himself losing in the fight, it seemed like a light had been turned on somewhere. Harry was suddenly very attractive.

Where he felt love for the Doctor, he felt lust for Harry and he was sure that it was just his mind acting out of desperation in its heartache, trying so hard to fill an empty void inside. A silly game of sucker-punch had been a way of getting some attention, he supposed. That was why he couldn't resist running into that room during what was clearly a very intimate moment and hitting those exposed ribs hard. It was very childish, and he was completely aware of that, but he knew he didn't have a chance of catching either Time Lord for himself so he may as well just have fun with them.

Harry knew. When they were cleaning themselves up after the storage room fight and he was looking at Harry in that new light for the first time, there was some sort of moment. Harry turned and looked at him too suddenly, and Jack was certain that his thoughts had been heard. Maybe that was why Harry had gone along with this strange little game—maybe he was just humouring him. Or maybe he thought sibling-like revelry would ensure that Jack knew exactly where he stood.

It wasn't until later that day that he thought the Doctor knew anything though. He had been looking through some of the old books in the library when the Doctor found him, holding a drink in each hand. They sat together in silence for a long time before the Doctor finally sighed and began to speak.

"I'm sorry I never let you buy me that drink."

Jack chuckled, amused. "It never would have worked out anyway."

"No, it wouldn't," the Doctor agreed. "But at least you'd know that for certain and gotten over it already. And I can tell you right now, Jack, that it would never work for you and Harry either."

"What, did he tell you?"

"No," the Doctor answered in a way that sounded perfectly truthful. "But he didn't have to. You're not exactly subtle when you have a crush on someone, Jack, and he's been acting a bit different around you too because he knows. I think that normally he wouldn't care, but the baby is changing him and I need you to understand that sometimes it makes him uncomfortable."

"Did you not see him playing naked tag with me today?"

The Doctor chuckled and nodded his head. "Like I said, I don't think he cares most of the time. It's not like him to shy away from an admirer anyway. It's just that the hormones he's experiencing tell him to protect the family unit, and you act as a threat to that. Pay attention to how he's behaving—if he seems even the slightest bit shy, just leave him alone. Alright?"

"Okay." He sipped the drink that the Doctor had given him. "I'm sorry I'm bothering anyone. I'll keep my comments to myself and I'll try to control my thoughts around him. Will that work?"

"It could," the Doctor said slowly. "Mind you, it might be nice if you kind of . . . well, only on days when he's in good humour obviously, but . . . you could play it up a bit."

"What do you mean?"

"Harry seems to be unhappy about, in his own words, his 'lumpiness'. I honestly can't keep away from him but he thinks I'm just trying to make him feel better about it." The Doctor shrugged his shoulders a bit and smirked. "So . . . you know . . . if it seems to be a day when he's feeling playful . . ."

"Are you telling me to flirt with your boyfriend?"

"Partner, remember? He's too old to be someone's boyfriend," the Doctor said in a mock-stern voice before smiling. "But, yes . . . maybe a little. He might believe you more than me at this point. I just don't want him feeling badly about himself."

Jack wasn't entirely sure if he could believe what he was hearing. "Okay then . . . whatever you say, Doc."

"Thank you, Jack." The Doctor clinked their glasses together and took another sip. "And I'll tell you what, if there's ever room for one more we'll call you."

Jack laughed. "And I can expect that call any day, huh?"

"Over my dead body," the Doctor answered with a pleasant smile. They chuckled for a moment, but then the Doctor looked him right in the eye and said in a frighteningly serious tone, "I'm sorry you're lonely, Jack, but hands off. With both of us. I'm his and he's mine."

"No, of course," Jack agreed quickly, startled to see the Doctor acting territorial. "I know that. Really."

The growing bump on Harry's chest had definitely changed everything. Harry's bizarre hormonal swings and aggression aside, he seemed to be becoming more patient and quiet while the Doctor was getting more energetic and protective. Harry was more tolerant of a day of rest, while the Doctor constantly needed to occupy himself, and it seemed most often that he wanted to occupy himself with Harry. It was painfully clear that neither Time Lord felt threatened nor enticed by Jack's attractions, but both had become very willing to remind Jack of their territory if his jokes became a little too flirtatious.

Any time the Doctor stepped in to tell Jack that enough was enough, he always secretly thanked him later. If Harry wasn't getting an ego-boost from Jack flirting with him, he definitely got one from seeing the Doctor get territorial. He supposed it was a good thing that at least his wasted feelings were helping in some way.

Two weeks after the incident in the lab, Harry began to show difficulty in keeping his mind stable. He wasn't just slipping into pre-attack behaviour, he was getting confused and upset and was completely aware of the fact that he could become dangerous at any moment, which only made things worse.

It always started with something simple. They would all be having breakfast and would get up to leave, but Harry would ask where his wheelchair or crutches had gone. He didn't believe them when they told him that his leg was not broken anymore and the Doctor had to physically take Harry's leg and bend it for him to show that it was all intact. He frequently asked what happened to Lucy, usually able to accept the answer quickly but occasionally kicking up an argument over it. Once he even asked where Qhoya was and the Doctor visibly paled. Luckily, Wilfred had been in the room to use his remarkable influence over Harry and distract him. Days would go by where the Time Lord seemed just seconds away from an attack and then suddenly he would snap out of it and be fine for another week.

The denndi was the size of a baseball when the Doctor took them to a tiny little moon orbiting the planet of Vaxet. Vaxet itself was primarily a game reserve but the second moon was famous for its spas. Donna was thrilled to be taken somewhere that didn't involve trekking through mud or being surrounded by loud and oily machinery and repeatedly told the Doctor that they should go to places like spas more often. The group was split into pairs and the Doctor practically begged Shaun to let him take Donna. Harry and Wilfred stuck together, as always, and so Jack found himself enjoying sitting in a mud bath and having his hair cut with Shaun beside him all along.

"See, the thing is," Shaun said after Jack asked him why he decided to let his wife go off with the Doctor. "I love Donna to bits, but she does talk an awful lot. I thought that she's going to want to chatter nonstop and so will the Doctor, so they may as well go together and give us a bit of quiet."

Shaun was definitely a quiet person compared to most of the Doctor's companions. He was a hard worker and rather skilled with handy work but, while everyone else had a tendency to make an awful lot of noise, Shaun preferred to sit quietly and work. He supposed that might be why he and Donna were so well suited to each other—she had someone who would listen to her all day while Shaun wasn't really expected to talk much. Still the two of them did talk quite a lot as they were pampered, mainly because a spa wasn't exactly what either of them considered great fun.

At the end of the day they all met up and took a moment to admire fresh haircuts and laugh about what seemed to be a loss of at least three layers of skin to various exfoliates. Donna was simply beaming with happiness as she showed off her professionally styled hair and make-up. She proudly told them that she had convinced the Doctor to get his toes painted because he complained about being bored while she was having hers done. After a bit of begging, the Doctor sheepishly removed one shoe so that the others could see the purple nails on the ends of his hairy toes.

"Well, that's step one done anyway," the Doctor declared after the laughter had subsided. "We're going somewhere very nice tonight, so you might want to dress it up a bit."

"Already done," Wilfred said with a perfectly straight face as he quickly pulled on one of the complimentary robes they'd received over top of his clothes.

There was a bit of muttering between Donna and Shaun once they were back on the TARDIS. She suspected that there was something they weren't being told and, after presenting her argument, both Shaun and Jack had to agree with her. They might have expected the Doctor to take them all to a spa if someone had begged him, but it was strange for him to take them just for fun.

"When I asked him why we'd gone, he said there was somewhere else we were going afterwards and that everyone ought to look nice," Donna explained, tapping her chin thoughtfully. "But that doesn't really make much sense, does it? I mean, we went to Pompeii and he couldn't be bothered to change out of his suit."

"Yeah," Jack agreed. "I've never really seen him worry about if he looks good for where he's travelling."

"Maybe it's Harry's idea," Shaun offered. "Or maybe, the Doctor's just doing it for Harry. I mean, I know he's a man and everything but, if Donna were pregnant, I'd want to take her out on fancy evenings and spoil her a bit."

"Aw! See why I married him?" Donna smiled happily and took Shaun's hand in both of hers. "Though you don't have to wait ‘til I'm pregnant to spoil me. I'd let you do it right now."

Things seemed even more suspicious when they all met up in the control room. They'd been warned that they were making a short stop before going to dinner and that it was going to be cold, so everyone was wearing coats over their fancy clothes and Donna had on some nice fur trim gloves. The strange thing wasn't that Harry was wearing a new suit, black and well-tailored for him, but it was strange to see him actually wearing the jacket for it. That alone might have slipped by without much notice—after all, he did wear his suit jacket in the Year That Never Was when he wasn't quite as sick—but he was also wearing a scarf.

"I thought you'd never wear it!" Wilfred exclaimed once he saw noticed the blue material wrapped snugly around Harry's neck.

"Well, you know," Harry muttered quietly in reply. "It's probably going to be a bit chilly."

"My God, are we going to freeze to death!?" Donna asked loudly. " 'Cause we've put coats on and everything but we're not exactly prepared for the North Pole!"

"Donna, it's going to be fine," the Doctor assured her, and Jack noticed that he had changed into what looked like a brand new black suit too. "No one is freezing to death. Alright? Now everyone just hold on to something."

"No, no, hang on," Harry said quickly, looking around the room. "Boris isn't here yet."

"Boris?" the Doctor repeated the word as though he were surprised. "There's going to be wind."

"I know."

The Doctor opened his mouth as if he were going to argue some point but then seemed to decide against it, closed his eyes, and shook his head a little. "Where is he then?"

"Getting ready I expect."

"Getting ready  _how_?"

"We had to get a little creative," Harry answered quietly. "I crushed up some crystal into dust and dug out an old suit for him to wear."

"You gave him one of my suits?"

"You're too tall to wear it now anyway," Harry crossed his arms stubbornly. "He was really excited about it, okay?"

Boris turned up a couple of minutes later and it was no wonder that it took him so long. The swarm seemed to be struggling to coordinate moving inside the navy blue suit without dropping it or losing shape. Occasionally a section of arm or leg would fall flat and dangle, empty for a moment until Boris could figure out what he'd done wrong and relocate the wandering patch of particles. Jack wasn't sure what Harry had meant about the crushed up crystal thing until he saw Boris moving in the light and the black shadow lit up and shimmered rather beautifully. It seemed that the areas of the swarm that weren't hidden beneath the suit were occupying themselves with holding onto particles of crystal dust to achieve the effect. He had even been clever enough to condense the dust in some areas so that he had properly visible and sparkling eyes and fingernails.

"Wizard!" Donna exclaimed upon seeing him.

Wilfred helped Boris with the silver tie that was hanging loosely around his neck—understandably, the swarm had been unable to tie it on his own. And, with that, they were ready. The Doctor input the co-ordinates of where they were supposed to go, and they jostled and rattled their way along. Boris lost a shoe during the flight and Shaun chased it across the control room to bring it back before they managed to land.

When the doors of the TARDIS opened, everything lit up with green light. Everyone hurried forward to get a good look and Jack wasn't entirely sure what he was seeing. They seemed to be standing on top of a snowy mountain, staring at a wall of green fire all around them. Tendrils of light stretched out towards them and floated about like little wisps of smoke.

"Aw, it's snowing!" the Doctor said happily. "I love snow."

"My word!" Wilfred exclaimed. "It looks like the Northern Lights!"

"Well, it is," the Doctor answered quickly. "Well, it's similar anyway.  _Well_ , as similar as you can get when you're half way across the universe. Take some particles charged by a solar wind, collide them with the atoms of the thermosphere during a geomagnetic storm and you get—"

"It's like one of those disco clubs!"

"Yes, Donna, you get a disco club," the Doctor finished in annoyance.

"Ohh, and Boris can be our disco ball."

"I've never seen anything like this before," Shaun said quietly. "What is this place?"

"The planet is called Aurenis," Harry answered, grinning widely. "But this mountain is known as the Bridge. It reaches high enough in the atmosphere and has a strong enough magnetic pull that the lights touch the ground—the sky meets the earth."

"The Horizon," the Doctor grinned widely and reached his hand out towards Harry. "If there was ever a place you could call the horizon, this would be it."

Everyone else was busy looking up at the sky, but Jack kept his eyes on the Time Lords. Harry took his scarf off and wrapped one half around his hand while the Doctor's outreached hand took the other half. Boris was paying close attention, standing next to Harry like a personal guard as both men took delicate care with wrapping the scarf. Jack wanted to ask what they were doing but the way they were looking at each other, like there was no one else in the universe, told him that maybe he didn't need to ask that question.

No one else seemed to be aware that anything was strange. As Harry and the Doctor spoke quietly to each other in Gallifreyan, with words that sounded well rehearsed rather than normal conversation, Wilfred was busy taking pictures of the sky while Shaun and Donna had their arms wrapped around each other, watching the lights.

"Wilfred," Jack muttered quietly, hoping that the Time Lords would notice him as he took Wilf by the arm. "Take pictures of them. Don't say anything, just keep taking pictures."

Wilfred didn't ask any questions—as soon as he laid eyes on Harry and the Doctor he was certain that Wilf was thinking the same thing he was. The brilliant light of the sky was more than enough to allow him to photograph them without the flash and, being so distracted with each other, it seemed that neither Harry nor the Doctor noticed.

After a few phrases were exchanged in words that Jack didn't need to translate to understand, the Doctor leaned forward to kiss Harry. They couldn't really hold a kiss properly as their lips kept pulling away to grin, but they did try and gave each other multiple pecks as a result. Jack could hear the quiet clicking of the camera's shutter as Wilf took photo after photo.

It wasn't until the Doctor and Harold pulled apart that they noticed they were being watched. Harry just grinned even wider and looked at Wilfred with his eyes lit up while the Doctor shyly bowed his head and grinned at his feet instead.

Harry reached his free hand towards Boris. "I'll just get it out myself," Harry said apologetically as he reached into Boris's jacket pocket. "Sorry, but I don't really want it being dropped and rolling down the mountain."

Then, just as Jack expected, Harry pulled out a gold ring. Wilfred audibly gasped beside him and the camera clicked away with much more enthusiasm than before. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw Donna turn around at the sound.

"You're really gonna make me wear that?" the Doctor said with a mock whine.

Harry just squinted his eyes in a way that would have looked threatening if he hadn't been smiling so much and tugged on the scarf to pull the Doctor's hand closer. He slipped the ring on the Doctor's finger and Jack watched breathlessly as the Doctor did the same in turn to Harry.

"Hang on a minute," he heard Donna say loudly as she stepped towards the scene.

The Doctor said two or three words from Gallifrey, which Harry repeated, both of them smiling wide.

"Doctor?" Donna said, even louder this time. "Now, just a minute."

Wilfred had tears streaming down his cheeks and he sniffled loudly as he stepped a little closer for a better picture. He got another shot as Harry and the Doctor, with their hands still bound tightly together with the scarf, kissed each other once more.

"Just hold on," Donna practically shouted. "Doctor!"

"Oh, blooming hell, Donna," the Doctor barked as he pulled away from Harry. "What!?"

"Did you just get bloody  _married_!?"

" _Yes_!"

"Oh, my God," Donna gasped, staring at them in shock for a moment. "Oh, my God!" She suddenly gave an excited squeal and ran towards the Doctor with her arms flung open wide to jump on him. "Oh, my God! You twit, you should have said something! I almost missed it!"

Within seconds, she was crying too. Wilfred rushed forward to join in on the hugging while Jack and Shaun both waited patiently to shake their hands and offer congratulations. The sky danced and Boris glittered and a small group of people embraced and laughed and cried with joy.

Wilfred found a suitably tall rock to set the camera upon to get a picture of them all together on top of the mountain. They had to take the picture twice because he had accidentally turned the flash on and the crystal dust Boris was carrying made him look like a blinding pillar of light in the first one.

The Doctor popped inside the TARDIS for a moment and came back out with a bottle of champagne and handed around glasses. Everyone said a little something as the champagne was poured out.

"I never thought I'd find myself standing on another world watching an alien wedding," Shaun said kindly. "But I'm sure glad that I have. Thank you for letting me be a part of your amazing lives."

"Boris says that he's always wanted to be a whole rather than a group," Harry translated while the sparkling shadow nodded happily. "But he is happy to be a part of a group if it means that we all are a part of it with him."

"I just can't believe this is happening," Donna said when it came her turn, still clearly in a genuine form of shock. "But I suppose if anyone's got the brass to put up with the Doctor for the rest of their life, it's you, Harry. You two maniacs were bloody well made for each other."

"Oh, my beautiful boys," Wilfred said tearfully, stepping forward to pull them both into a hug again. "I can't tell you how happy I am for you both. I can't tell you how wonderful I think your lives will be together. And I can't tell you how privileged I feel to be a part of it. You can always come to me to moan about each other or to ask me to take care of that little baby of yours when it comes along. I'm not going anywhere. We're a family—all of us—and we're all damn lucky to be together."

Jack was certain he saw Harry wipe away a tear when Wilf hugged him for the hundredth time.

"I suppose I really missed my chance," Jack said, smirking. "Two brave, intelligent, and downright handsome men and they just had to fall for each other. Now I know what all the women are always complaining about. Still, I've never seen two people who deserved each other more. Live forever, Doctor, together."

"Alright!" the Doctor cried happily and raised his glass. "To a bright future, and to always having something worth fighting for."

"To being with everyone we love," Harry added, raising his own, then he looked Jack straight in the eye and smirked. "And Jack."

And before Jack could even think, a fist hit him squarely in the jaw.


	54. The Doctor

Waking up that morning felt like he was still dreaming. The Doctor groggily blinked up at the glass ceiling, at the beams of sunlight stretching across the sky and the snowflakes drifting downward, and it still felt like a dream. The first thing he did was lift his hand to twist the simple gold ring on his finger around and make sure that it was actually there.

He was married. Properly, happily, without showing up late or running off early, without anything going wrong or anyone dying, he got married.

"I'm not telling you the combination to take it off."

The Doctor looked beside him and saw Harry laying there, with the majority of his face still buried in his pillow and just the corner of his mouth visible to show that he was smiling. Harry was really there. They were both really there. It seemed that some part of the Doctor's brain had never trusted this reality, had never trusted that any of his happiness could last, but now it was sinking in that this was no dream. He had a spouse. He had a family. He had a  _life_  now.

Whatever nightmares were to come seemed all the more terrifying, yes, but the Doctor was all the more determined to fight like hell for it. He would not sit idly by and let someone take that which he had waited so long for. And that silly little gold ring—that very human tradition of flaunting relationships that went completely against the Doctor's private nature—that ring was the one and only warning he would give. Only a fool with no value for their own life would dare to stand between him and Harry now.

"I won't take it off," the Doctor promised.

No matter what anyone did in the whole of time and space, they could never change this. The Doctor had been sure to land them during a still point in time so that, with a little help from the TARDIS, he could create a fixed point. If anyone ever tried to erase those moments of quiet oaths and the moments of joyful celebrations that followed afterwards, they would have to sacrifice the whole of creation with it. He couldn't think of anything more binding than that.

Harry rolled over onto his back, shifting uncomfortably as he removed the pillow he had shoved under his chest to hold him up and stop his weight from crushing the denndi. The moment the Doctor saw that little ball of flesh come into the light, he couldn't resist reaching his hand out and touching it.

"Hello, there, you little monster," he said, grinning as Harry groaned and tried to push his hands away. "Do you want to say good morning to your Banni? Aw, yes, you do."

"Stop it," Harry grumbled, trying unsuccessfully to push the Doctor back. "They can't hear you yet anyway."

"Oh, we don't know that," the Doctor insisted and latched on to Harry's side, forcibly pulling himself close so that he could rest his head on Harry's shoulder with his nose against the side of the denndi. "They’ve got two geniuses for parents so they’re probably an early learner. Tokrah has no faith in you, baby."

"Don't say that!"

"But I thought they couldn't hear me?"

Harry gave up after a few minutes and let the Doctor do what he wanted. He laid there for quite a long time, finding it strangely comforting to talk to the little bump even if he was only talking nonsense that wouldn't be heard.

This one would grow up properly, he decided. There was no Academy that would want to whisk them away too young, no burden of duty placed on their shoulders from infancy, and absolutely no loneliness. This baby would not feel any fear of the universe because it had two fathers who were masters at fighting back the monsters in the dark, and an entire family of people who were not afraid to take a stand. This baby would not grow up as a Time Lord but as a child of the TARDIS, and that was so much better.

By the time the Doctor felt satisfied to let the motionless bump be, Harry had fallen back asleep. It was probably best not to wake him after such a long night and the Doctor crept out of bed quietly to jump in the shower. It would be nice to have a little time to himself after all the commotion last night anyway.

Boris had attracted an awful lot of attention at the restaurant and several people couldn't resist coming over to talk to him. Then of course, once they were there, there were so many other interesting things to hold their attention. First, they would become captivated by Boris himself, then by the fact that Harry could use telepathy to speak for Boris, then they would notice the lump on Harry's chest and Wilfred couldn't help but blurt out that it was a baby, and at some point during the baby talk, Donna would happily find some excuse to bring up the fact they were celebrating a wedding.

As the night progressed, more chats turned into invitations to sit down, tables had been pushed together, and their party had doubled. A lovely couple who had joined them insisted on buying a round of drinks for everyone, then insisted on buying more just so that they could watch the way Boris would stick his finger in the glass and the drink would vanish as though it were being sucked through a straw. They shared many stories and the Doctor was a little relieved to see that Jack had a rather attractive woman for him to focus his flirtatious comments on.

It was all good fun, but it had been an unusual amount of people and noise to be exposed to. When the others left to return to the TARDIS and he and Harry were finally left alone to head to the hotel suite they decided to stay in, they both let out a sigh of relief. Men who had spent so many years alone were not entirely prepared to be quite so social.

As the Doctor reached to turn the water off he felt something stir in his mind—something being touched by an outside source. He paused a moment to slick back his hair with his hands, keeping the water from his eyes, as he tried to identify it. But there was no feeling of warmth or happiness, nothing even familiar.

"If you think catching me without my clothes on is going to make me an easy a target," he said casually, reaching through the shower curtain to grab a towel. "You're going to have to try harder."

He had expected it but seeing her standing there when he pulled back the curtain still seemed to make his hearts stop for a moment. There she was, as real and solid as he was, though he knew she was only projecting the image into his mind. That sweet looking little girl from Godforge that he had gotten to his knees for, suffered having his hair pulled, and kissed her happily on the cheek was staring up at him with her grey eyes full of confidence.

"Doctor," she said with a little bow of her head. "I believe congratulations are in order."

"What do you want?"

"Nothing," she answered simply, and her black lips curled upwards into a polite smile. "I am glad to see that you are living your life well."

Did she only mean the wedding, or did she know about the baby as well? He couldn't let any fear show. He couldn't react in any way that might give her information. She was presenting herself for a reason and he was determined not to give her what she came for, no matter what it was.

"Don't give me that rubbish," he answered impatiently, grabbing a second towel to rub his hair dry. "You can hardly say that when we both know you have only the worst intentions for me."

"Not for you," she assured him, still smiling in that eerily casual way, as though they were only discussing weekend plans. "You are so loved. Not just by your new husband, but by all, and I have a lot of respect for that. I have to admit that I am jealous of you, Doctor, and I still regret what must be done. I do not—"

"There is nothing that  _must_  be done!"

"Do not interrupt me." She said it calmly, but with an edge of anger to her voice.

"I'll interrupt you all I like. Talking is what I do best," he spat back—it was always possible that she might slip up if he made her emotional. "And I hardly think that I owe you any courtesy no matter what niceties you observe because, even if you regret it, you are willfully trying to take away everything that matters to me. You don't deserve to speak to me, let alone ask me to listen. Now, in case you haven't noticed, I was trying to get ready for my first day as a married man. So go away."

He turned away from her and looked into the bathroom mirror instead. There was a painfully long moment where he had to pretend that he was truly preoccupied with drying his hair and checking if the length of his sideburns were even. She stood there, like a ghost, just watching him in the mirror's reflection. He supposed she was waiting for a sign of weakness or some signal that could allow her to start up the conversation again.

"I came to talk with you, Doctor," she said after a significant silence.

"I know that," he answered, keeping his tone impatient and refusing to let his eyes wander back to her. "But I don't want to talk with  _you_."

"Perhaps I have waited long enough. Perhaps I should take you now?"

"You're welcome to try."

"Are you not concerned for the safety of your child?"

He hesitated. He not only hesitated, he looked at her. She got the reaction she wanted. He had really hoped that she didn't know about that. But she was threatening his family again—reminding him of what she intended to do and making it clear that she was not going to change her mind. That was what she came for.

This was about power and control. This was about fear. She wanted him to feel like he was trapped on some path to an inevitable fate. For the first time, he realized that maybe the reason she was warning him was because she hoped he would walk into the slaughter, thinking he had no choice. Just like he nearly did on Christmas day because he misinterpreted the prophecy of the Ood.

So far, he hadn't seen her do anything but talk and display a few telepathic tricks.

"Don't play games with me," he growled, truly losing his patience now. "My child is no more safe from you than I am. I know what you do to children." He was raising his voice, but he was too angry to care, and seeing her take a step backwards only fueled the forces of anger bubbling forth in his mind. "And you should know what  _I_  do to people who kill children. You like to act like you know  _so_  much, but you have made a mistake that even the biggest of fools would not be stupid enough to make."

He turned and bent down low to look her right in the eye—the same thing that had earned him so much of her admiration on Godforge. He saw just a flash of fear in those dead, grey eyes and a surge of savage pleasure shot through him, rippling through him and growing stronger as he watched her take another tiny step back. He thought of the presence he felt during the soul infusion with Harry and felt it again now—a grizzly animal waiting to bite and tear and taste blood.

"You let me know that you're still alive," he hissed, bringing his face within inches of hers. "You think you're coming after me but know this, little girl: I am the Doctor and  _I_  am coming for _you_."

It was then that he realized why she looked afraid. He was reaching back through the bridge she had created and the fury he felt was lashing out. He was using the same skill that he thought was Harry's alone—creating a physical sensation by simply tricking the brain into believing it was experiencing touch. He knew that she could feel his hands, like those of some vengeful ghost, gripping her by the shoulders and squeezing with crushing force, threatening to find their way to her throat.

"Because if there was anything true that the Master ever told you, it was that I know what you did. And I will kill you for it."

He saw her flinching. Saw the confusion and surprise. She didn't know that he had learned such a skill any more than he did, and he loved that it frightened her. He didn't really know how he was doing it, but he tried to intensify everything he felt and thought about hurting her. With the simple power of his mind, he could make her feel physical pain. As satisfying as it was to make her hurt, it felt so much better to make her afraid.

"Basically . . . run."


	55. Wilfred

Shaun was the last person to wander into the kitchen for breakfast and, the moment he arrived, Wilfred saw the Doctor's face light up with excitement. He'd noticed that both Harry and the Doctor seemed to be acting a little strange but neither one had said anything. Now that everyone was together, it seemed it was time to find out.

"Morning, Shaun," the Doctor said quickly before putting both his hands up in the air. "Alright, now everyone pay attention for a minute."

"What's going on?" Wilfred asked.

It was a little bit difficult these days to tell when the Doctor was truly excited about something because, in the three weeks that had passed since the wedding, it seemed he was happier every day. He was always smiling now.

"Everyone just sit still and be quiet for a minute," the Doctor said, grinning widely before he nudged Harry with his elbow. "Go ahead."

Wilfred waited for Harry to do something, but he didn't. He just stood there, leaning against the countertop and looking at them. He was about to ask what they were meant to be waiting for when he felt something change in himself.

There was a funny sensation like something warm was nuzzling against him, almost like a having a cat sitting and purring on his chest. It felt like some kind of door was opening inside his mind and letting little wisps of feelings float out—he felt peaceful and safe, yet, at the same time, a bit impatient and extremely curious. He found himself wanting to stretch out his entire body, and strange impulses to kick his feet or grab at anything he saw just to see what it felt like. Everything seemed new and almost magical, while a constant drumming in his head made him feel protected.

"Harry," he said, feeling worried despite how wonderful it all seemed. "That drumming sound—"

"It's just my heartbeat, Grandfather," Harry answered him quickly and, even as he said it, Wilfred could hear a strange muffled echo of Harry's voice in the back of his mind. "You're listening to my hearts."

"Oh, it's beautiful," Donna said, her voice full of wonder and her eyes glistening slightly. "It's so small! I mean, it's just this little bump you could hide under a hat—it's not even born yet and it's telling me how it feels. How is it doing that?"

"They’re communicating with Harry," the Doctor explained, unable to stop smiling. "It's just like how human babies kick their mothers from inside while they learn how to use their legs. Our baby is developing their mind and sometimes they’ll telepathically 'kick', establishing a mental connection and sharing feelings with Harry. He's just projecting to you what he's feeling from the baby."

"Can we communicate back?" Donna asked eagerly. "Oh, I'd love it if I could talk back to him!"

"You could," the Doctor answered, scratching his chin thoughtfully. "Harry could project your feelings back, but it's probably best not to do that so early because—hold on a second, did you say 'him'?"

"Yeah," Donna answered, looking around at the rest of the group curiously. "Isn't it a boy?"

"I never said it was a boy," Harry answered with a slight frown.

"I know you didn't but . . . well, it's just obvious, isn't it?"

Shaun looked at her in confusion and shook his head a bit. "I never felt anything that told me if it was a boy or a girl." Wilfred and Jack both agreed that they hadn't had any indication either.

"But it  _is_  a boy," Donna insisted. "Isn't it?"

The Doctor's face split into an even wider grin than before. "Yes, it is."

"Woman's intuition?" Jack suggested helpfully.

"Could be," the Doctor replied. "I mean, you would expect a woman to have a better understanding of a baby than a man, but still . . . could be there are still a few traces of Time Lord in you, Donna."

News that the baby was a boy sparked action in Shaun. He had been joining the boys in their labs often, but he was usually working on his own projects. After a little training on how to use the tools available, Shaun had been building baby furniture that he was specially designing to withstand the kind of ruckus the TARDIS went through. He was primarily concerned with making sure nothing would fall over, but he was taking lessons from the Doctor on how to build and use gravity manipulators.

"The last thing anyone needs is for the TARDIS to have some sort of a crash landing and have a baby fly up out its crib," Shaun explained as Wilfred kept him company while he worked. "I was trying to think of something but you can't exactly strap him in and building some kind of rolling cage still wouldn't stop him from getting bumps and bruises. This thing will act like an air bag in a car . . . except it's gentle."

"It's good," the Doctor said approvingly, coming over from his own work station to have a look. "It's clever. The ship could be flipping end over end and the baby would barely feel a thing."

"That is the idea," Shaun suddenly turned and looked at the Doctor very seriously. "Please don't start flipping the ship over."

There seemed to be so much activity lately. Everyone was working on something it seemed. Harry had been working so hard in his lab that he had been found sleeping in there on occasion, while the Doctor was always tinkering with something and had developed a habit of mysteriously disappearing for hours at a time. The others helped with any jobs the Time Lords deemed them capable of doing, but no one was really sure what the actual goal was.

When asked what the project was, Harry would just mutter something about dampening fields and getting ideas from Shaun after seeing what he deemed an ingenious use for gravity manipulators on the baby crib. The two were spending more and more time working together, often in silence unless Shaun was getting a lesson in something.

"It's the simplest thing but I never would have thought of it," Harry was saying once as he worked on a piece of machinery no bigger than a cell phone. "Using a gravity manipulator on a two-dimensional scale to create a buffer zone—it's brilliant. The Doctor always talks about humans having creativity that we don’t, but I never really believed him. Alright, now look, throw something at me."

Harry picked up his tiny piece of machinery and flipped a switch on it, looking at Wilfred expectantly. Wilf obediently picked a pen off the table and tossed it half heartedly. He watched as it suddenly stopped dead in the air and dropped to the floor, as though it had hit an invisible wall.

Harry gave an excited laugh. "Excellent!"

"But don't you already have things like this?" Wilfred asked in confusion. "Force fields or something like that?"

"Oh, yeah, of course," Harry answered, putting down the device and picking up some of his tools. "But force fields ripple when you touch them. You can see exactly where they reach and where they are originating from just by chucking a pebble at it. Not to mention everyone uses force fields these days and everyone knows how to disrupt the signals to turn them off or get past them. A modified gravity manipulator won't be expected—they won't know what to do with it. Hell, if I was around they might even just think I was telepathically blocking their minds to stop them from moving forward."

"And that's good, is it?"

"It's perfect."

The Doctor's projects seemed to be more focused on learning than building, as he was often seen tearing through books or working away on a computer, looking at star charts and what looked like blue prints for various types of ships. He'd also been asking Wilfred to help him practice his telepathic skills.

Usually Wilfred would just wind up sitting in a chair for an hour or two while the Doctor stared at him from across the room and nothing happened. A full month had passed with nearly daily practices and despite the Doctor's intense gaze and occasionally going red in the face, Wilfred never felt a thing. The first success they'd had was on a day when the Doctor was already in a foul mood though nobody, not even Harry, understood why.

"We don't have to do this today," Wilfred said sympathetically, worrying as the Doctor appeared more and more stressed. "Maybe we should just leave it. You said so yourself, Doctor, that Harry is unusually skilled at it, so you shouldn't feel bad if you can't—"

"I  _can_ ," the Doctor interrupted firmly. "I can do it. I can project. I  _can_. I just need to figure out how to establish the connection. I just need the bridge."

"But I can project too," Wilfred offered gently. "Anyone can. It's just Harry being able to pick it up that makes it work."

"I said I can do it!"

The Doctor had shouted and his eyes lit up in a momentary flash of anger, but that wasn't what had surprised Wilfred. What had surprised him was the feeling of pressure against his chest. It wasn't very strong, just a gentle push more than anything, but strong enough for him to know that it was real.

As he sat there, staring at the Doctor in shock, the Time Lord was quick to look ashamed of himself. "I'm sorry, Wilfred," he said quickly, turning his eyes downward. "I didn't mean to shout."

"Do it again!"

The Doctor frowned at him, looking perfectly confused. "What?"

"I felt something!" Wilf answered excitedly. "Whatever you just did, it worked. I felt something push me."

The Doctor stared at him a moment longer as though he didn't quite believe him, but then his eyes lit up with realization. "I was angry," the Doctor said quietly. "That's it. You can't just think it, you've got to feel it. I was angry!"

The Doctor laughed victoriously and then tried a few more times to establish the telepathic connection he had been trying so hard to achieve. In ten minutes, Wilfred felt another push, and again a few minutes after that. The Doctor was thrilled and went on some rambling episode in which he talked about strong emotion being the key—which Wilf supposed made a lot of sense considering that Harry kept his emotions on the surface, while the Doctor tended to bottle them up.

After a few more tries the Doctor's face changed so dramatically that, for a second, Wilfred thought he'd hurt himself. "I have to try something," he said quickly and, without further explanation, fled the room.

He discovered later that day that the Doctor had gone straight to Harry to see if he could communicate with their baby. He had been successful, making both Time Lords ecstatic, even if the connection had only been a muffled whisper compared to how clear it was when Harry did it.

They were so near, Wilfred realized sadly that night. The months were flying by and they were so close to the end of that wonderful year the Doctor had prophesied. It was hard to imagine what was going to happen. It was hard to see the boys sitting together and being happy when that image was still sitting in the back of his head—that image of Harry paling and closing his eyes and of the Doctor trying frantically to keep him awake as his fingers were being reattached.

Wilfred looked up and saw Harry's eyes locked on him from across the room. Did he know? Had he seen it? It was too difficult to keep a secret around that man and sometimes it was infuriating. What would happen if Harry knew what was coming?

There was definitely a look of fear in those dark eyes. What had he seen?

"We should go to Godforge," Harry said suddenly, without even looking away from Wilfred.

"What for?" the Doctor asked. "It's terribly hot there."

"I want to get my knife fixed," Harry answered casually, though Wilfred knew from the look in his eye that he didn't want to tell the truth. "It's got a big empty space in it from the missing diamond and it's annoying."

"Alright. We'll go tomorrow then. I want you to have a good rest before we go anywhere with that much heat."

The next morning, when they stepped through the doors of the TARDIS, everyone except Harry looked surprised. Wilfred turned to look at him as the smell of smoke drifted in and saw nothing but grim expectation.

"Is it supposed to look like this?" Shaun asked hesitantly. "That doesn't really look like the temple you described."

"No," the Doctor answered in shock. "No, no, no . . . what's happened?"

Many of the stalls in the marketplace were gone, and the ones that remained were either damaged or very recently repaired. The temple that gleamed in the light the last time he stood there now had parts of its towers ripped clean off, and flames burned all around them. Piles of rubble set to burn to dust and some piles, he suspected from the smell, of the dead.

Harry was the first to begin walking and the others fell into step. Wilfred saw Harry lift a hand to protectively cover the denndi with his eyes glazed over and distant. The Doctor seemed at a complete loss, but Harry seemed to know exactly what had happened. He had been expecting this from nothing more than something he had seen in Wilfred's head.

What in the world had he  _seen_? Had Wilfred known something this whole time that could have saved Godforge from this sort of destruction? Had he been too busy being a bumbling old grandfather fretting over full grown men as though they were children to notice that he had been exposed to vital and possibly life-saving information?

"They came to Earth looking for a saviour," Jack said quietly. "Why didn't we realize that meant they needed saving?"

"Saving from  _what_?" Wilfred asked in exasperation. "This place was fine when we were here last."

And then he remembered. As Harry's eyes, so full of fear and defeat, turned upon him, he remembered. The priest told them that the fire's had been showing signs of distress—usually an omen of the coming of chaos or evil. And as Harry looked at him, he felt the memory of a little girl with black lips drift to the surface of his mind.

"You knew she was here," Harry whispered angrily, reaching out and gripping the Doctor's arm tightly. "You knew she was alive and that she was here, and you never came back to even warn them."

"Harry, I didn't know until after we left," the Doctor answered quickly. "I thought she would follow us. I didn't think—"

"You knew she was alive!" Harry shouted, and Wilfred saw the others take a step back from the pair. "And if you had just told me the truth, I could have told you what she would do. This is your fault as much as it is mine."

And Wilfred stood with the others, afraid and confused, as Harry stormed off towards the fires with the Doctor chasing after him.


	56. Harry

The heat was unbearable. Even worse than it was before because of all the rubble pits. Harry could smell the decay and putrid burning of bodies and taste their ash in the air. This was her doing, without a doubt. Oh, that wicked little girl had been hard at work since crawling her way out of the war.

He couldn't help feeling angry with the Doctor. The sensible part of his mind reminded him that the Doctor would never have told him she was alive out of fear for his health and happiness. His mind still had tendencies to slip into confusion when he was afraid, and his fear of her was absolute.

The sensible part of him told him that, while the rest of him showed his anger. The Doctor was trying to talk to him, trying to stop him, but he refused to listen. Harry pushed away the hands that grasped at him and he stared through the eyes that looked at him so pleadingly. The Doctor was afraid that she was still there, and he was trying desperately to get Harry to go back, but he would not go. He knew that if she was still there, no one would be walking free in the streets like they were.

"You should have said something," he hissed in Gallifreyan, to stop the others from knowing what he was saying. "This is so much bigger than you and me, Doctor. How  _dare_  you keep something like that a secret?"

"I know. Harry, I know," the Doctor answered him quickly, his voice clearly showing his distress. "Listen, I'm sorry. I am so sorry, but we can handle—"

" _You let me carry a baby_!" he roared, pushing the Doctor back again, though this time the sensible part told him that he pushed too hard. "Do you have  _any_  idea what she will do to my—to  _our_  son if she gets a hold of him!?"

He was so angry. That sensible part of him was shouting at him to stop and to calm down. He heard it, in the back of his head, telling him to let go when he grabbed the Doctor by the arms. But he was so angry that he didn't care. His hands squeezed tight and it felt like the heat around him was infecting him inside.

"She won't just kill me, Doctor," he shouted again, maintaining his grip so that he could shake that infuriating man a bit. "She'll keep us until he's born and then she'll make us watch him suffer."

Hands were grabbing at him from behind and he heard other sensible voices telling him to stop. But he wasn't done yet because the Doctor didn't look afraid. He was hurt, yes, but not afraid. And he needed to understand how foolish it was not to be afraid.

"She'll kill everyone, don't you know that?" Harry urged. "Why would you do this? Why would you start all this with me? Why would you act like having a child was so wonderful when you knew she was out there!?"

"Because now we'll fight for it!" the Doctor barked back, giving Harry a push to force his hands away. "We have so much to lose now that there is no way in hell either of us are going to go down easily. These are  _our_  lives, not hers, and we don't stop living just because she says so, do you understand?"

Harry stared furiously at the pair of brown eyes that glared defiantly and unapologetically back. "You're insane."

"Do you love me, Harry?" the Doctor asked, his voice nearly growling and his jaw set firmly.

"Now don't start with—"

"I asked you if you loved me, now answer the question!" the Doctor shouted impatiently. "Do. You. Love. Me? Yes or no?"

"Yes!" he shouted in return.

"I want you to say it. Say it and think about what it means!"

"Alright, I love you!" His hands shot upwards in exasperation and he saw Donna jump out of the corner of his eye. He'd forgotten that the rest of the group had no idea what they were saying. For all they knew, the two of them were seconds away from violence.

"Do you love our baby?"

"Of course I do."

"And do you love them?" the Doctor asked, gesturing towards the group that were staring at them with such anxious faces.

Harry glowered at him. He didn't care how good the Doctor's excuse was, he was still furious. Either way, Godforge was still in ruins and people had died. He felt responsible for that happening and, if the Doctor hadn't kept secrets, it might have been prevented.

"She's not killing any one of us because we aren't going to let her," the Doctor said in that low growl of his that he used when he was completely serious. "I am  _not_  going to apologize for falling in love, getting married,  _or_  for bringing new life into this universe and neither are you. I regret nothing."

The Doctor turned on his heel and began to walk away. Despite Harry’s anger and frustration, and despite the large part of him that wanted to take off his shoe and hurl it at the Doctor's head, he bit his tongue and followed. A few quick steps caught him up to the Doctor and, though he made sure to do it a bit roughly, took hold of his hand.

"I'm still mad at you," he said grumpily.

"Be mad all you want. I don't care," the Doctor answered just as grumpily, though he locked their fingers together without hesitation.

The others followed after a moment or two of muttering amongst themselves and then they all remained unnaturally quiet. Harry supposed it was for the best though, because he certainly didn't want to be pestered with questions and he had a feeling that the Doctor didn't either.

They found a priest outside the temple, going through an enormous book and marking off the members of their brotherhood that had fallen. The Doctor began to question him and the priest obliged most politely. He spoke of the fires showing distress and warning them of the presence of evil, but they were still unprepared. They called her the Nightmare, for the way she infected their thoughts and dreams and filled them with horrors.

At first, she was torturing the Haephsian people into madness with her imaginary terrors and they began to murder their own. Then she appeared with soldiers and stole so many of their people away. Parents fell protecting their children, friends protecting friends, even many of their own brotherhood disappeared with the mysterious girl with black lips.

Some of the brotherhood saw it as the fulfillment of a prophecy and insisted that they were meant to rescue a Star in the form of a child that would come back to Godforge and purge it of evil. A team volunteered, desperate to earn approval from the gods and perhaps earn their mercy, but the team never returned.

Harry saw Donna's face fall as the story was told. He knew that she felt badly enough about what happened on Christmas day, but learning that they were trying to save so many lives must have made it worse for her.

"But then what happened?" the Doctor asked, looking around in confusion. "You're organizing and rebuilding, so she can't still be here. Where did she go? She didn't just pack up and leave."

The priest's eyes lit up with pride and a smile spread across his scaly face. "The Star came anyway."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Are you saying that a  _child_  saved you?"

"A man," the priest answered with a shake of his of head.

"But no, no it can't be," Donna said a bit too loudly as she pushed her way past Harry to come face to face with the priest. "Because the prophecy said a child and babies don't grow up that fast."

"He is one of the gods," the priest answered as though it were perfectly simple. "Gods are not bound by bodies or age."

"Did he look Haephsian?" Harry asked and, when the priest shook his head, he turned to the Doctor with raised eyebrows. "A god of the Haephsian people but it doesn't take a Haephsian form?

"It is not our place to question the decisions of the stars themselves," the priest answered simply. "Our pilgrim brothers failed the test given to them and never returned. We are very blessed that the Star showed us such forgiveness despite their shortcomings. We would not dare question that forgiveness."

"Alright, fair enough, but what did he  _do_?" the Doctor asked. "How did he just show up and chase away an army?"

"We supplied him with the armour of the most scared arts that he might fight for his people," the priest explained, his eyes clearly showing the excitement he felt from just the memory. "And wielding a white staff he pushed the soldiers back towards their ships and they began to fight amongst themselves while other simply turned and ran. It was truly a sight of awe."

"And that's it?" Harry asked in disbelief. "She just left?"

"No!" the priest answered quickly. "The Nightmare's soldiers were in such a state of pandemonium that it seemed as though they had been turned into mere animals and she had no protection from them. The Star called for her blood and she had no more defenses. His holy light strengthened his followers and we stormed her ship with him. It was then that she ran."

"Well, the enemy of our enemy makes a friend, doesn't it?" Jack said happily. "And a kickass one at that. Did he say what his name was?"

"He is the Star," the priest answered plainly.

"How about his species?"

"He is the Star," the priest answered again, frowning at them as if he thought them incredibly stupid. "One of the gods who reward us for our faith and—"

"Yeah, yeah, we get it," the Doctor interrupted a bit impatiently. "Alright, thank you. Thank you very much."

There was a bit of muttering back and forth between the others as they walked back to the ship, but Harry wasn't really paying attention. It was so hot, and the stench of death was making him feel a bit dizzy. The baby was kicking and moving about, clearly agitated, and he wondered if the heat was bothering him too.

Grandfather must have known. He felt the old man's hand on his shoulder and glanced back to see him smiling kindly. Was Wilfred worried about him because of the heat or because of the situation? He was suddenly aware again that the shouting match he had with the Doctor had not been in English and that maybe the others thought that they were still angry with each other.

He was still angry and, though he would never admit it, the Doctor was angry with him too. But it was a lingering anger that was only there because nothing had replaced it yet and Harry thought it might be best to try to put the others at ease.

"Baby's trying to say hello to you, Banni," he said quietly, reaching out to tap the Doctor on the shoulder.

The man didn't say a word. He turned around, still scowling a bit, but the tense lines in his face vanished and his eyes lit up when Harry grabbed his hand and placed it over top of the denndi. It was a moment or two before the Doctor seemed to feel anything, which was amazing to Harry because he felt every single wiggle, and just like that all anger was forgotten.

"I want to feel it!" Donna bumped the Doctor aside with her shoulder and placed her hands on Harry's chest, grinning in delight when the baby gave another strong kick. "My word, he's gonna be a footballer, this one!"

Harry wasn't exactly in the mood to stand in that stifling heat while everyone in the group took turns at groping his chest, but he decided to tolerate it if only to lighten things up a little. The heat was making it more difficult to keep his mind to himself, and the last thing he wanted was to be experiencing the negativity of five other people.

He glanced over Wilfred's shoulder as those wrinkled hands hesitantly and rather awkwardly landed over top of the kicking baby. The Doctor was smirking. Despite the sight of smoke, the smell of death, and the knowledge of the evil that threatened them all, there was a shine to his eyes and joy tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"He's a whiner, just like his Tokrah," the Doctor said after a moment of many hands reaching out to Harry. "He doesn't like the heat much, I suspect. We'd best head back to the TARDIS and quickly."

Harry wasn't going to argue with that, and he was extremely grateful that no one else did either. He could swear that Godforge seemed ten times hotter than the last time he had been there, though he supposed that carrying a denndi had made it harder on his body. The walk back to the TARDIS felt like it took forever, and it was worse with each step.

"The thing I don't understand is the whole nightmare thing," Jack said as the blue box finally came into view. "Because Tussenii don't have telepathic abilities."

"You're right, they don't," the Doctor answered, turning to walk backwards so that he could frown curiously at Jack. "What makes you say she's Tussenii?"

"The way he described her," Jack answered with a shrug. "The pale features, the black lips, the fact that she looks like a little girl when she can't be. Tussenii age up and down, don't they?"

"They do," the Doctor answered slowly. "I also suspected that was what she was but came across the same problem you did."

"Right. Tussenii aren't telepathic."

God, it was hot and their chatter was annoying. "She's only half Tussenii," Harry answered irritably. "You already knew that."

There was a bit of an odd silence, but he didn't really care. The TARDIS was close now, and inside it were wonderful things like air conditioning and ice and the swimming pool with its lovely cool and calming water.

"Actually, I didn't know that," Jack replied as the Doctor opened those beautiful blue doors and the promise of shelter stood before him.

"What  _do_  you know, Jack?" he huffed in irritation and pushed past him to get inside.

The relief was almost immediate, stepping into the shade from beneath a glaring sun. The sweat on his face turned cold and he let the cooling sensation wash over him. When Harry opened his eyes again and took a look around, the others were looking at him a bit oddly. All except the Doctor, who was busy working away on the ship's console.

Maybe Jack didn't know but the Doctor did. How long had that mad old Time Lord convinced himself that he didn't know a thing about the Nightmare? How long had he thought about it just enough to convince himself that he had tried without allowing himself to realize the truth?

Yes, the Doctor knew all about that half-breed Tussenii whether he denied it or not.

Harry remembered the first day he met the girl known as the Nightmare. He'd heard all about her and the travesties that followed in her wake. He remembered working with Kahlia to find out who the Nightmare's spy had been for so long and he should have known the moment they found her. The moment he saw the woman who had managed to capture his heart, no matter how briefly, look up at him in fear and ecstasy and lift the communicator to her lips, he should have known that there was more to it than he had thought.

" _He's here,"_  she said. She looked at him right in the face, though they hadn't yet met, and smiled.

" _He's here,"_  meant he had been expected. She knew he would come and she anticipated something more, but he hadn't thought about it then. In his blind rage, he never thought to wonder why a spy would look so thrilled to get caught.

He pulled the trigger and Kahlia screamed as her mother fell. His hearts had turned cold for the time being and he didn't wait to say goodbye or to look in his daughter's eyes as she faded from existence; he just turned and walked away.

He didn't know all the details of what happened next. All he knew was that he never made it back to the rendezvous ship before the Nightmare and her troops descended. The land burned and Time Lords died and he was not taken without soaking himself in the blood of his enemy first. The exhaustion set in, the thick smoke making it hard to breathe and the unbearably loud drumming in his head making it impossible to concentrate. Finally, he was overpowered and taken captive, dragged aboard the Nightmare's ship to meet the Queen herself for the very first time.

He looked into those unforgiving grey eyes and felt as though he might die right then and there. He should never have pulled that trigger, or else he should never have left without making sure that vile woman was dead. The betrayal of a lover was a bitter sting, but the betrayal of a father was far worse—a betrayal deep enough to twist a person into something evil.

"Have I ever shown you what my daughter looked like?" Harry asked Jack quietly, though his eyes were fixated on the man at the console.

"Harry, don't," the Doctor said quickly, looking up at him with panicked eyes. "You're tired from the heat. The baby is in distress. You shouldn't be pushing yourself with telepathy until you've had a chance to rest. Just don't."

Just like with Berran. The Doctor had known all along . . . he just didn't _want_ to know.

Harry projected the image of Kahlia into their minds and he saw the Doctor's panicked face turn to one of defeat. Those brown eyes turned downward and he saw a tear spill down the Doctor's cheek, while the others simply looked at him in awe. Donna gasped in a way that sounded like she was holding back a sob and covered her face with her hands, and something that sounded rather like a whimper escaped Wilfred's mouth.

They could all see her now. His beautiful daughter, the way she looked when she fought beside him. She was nearly sixty at the time, though she only looked to be in her early twenties, with short silver hair and blue-grey eyes. And then, just as they were now, those lips tugging into that half smile of hers were black as night.

She had always been an unstoppable force with insatiable ambition, even as a child, and he had given her a purpose—to conquer, to kill, to become Master over the universe where her father had failed. Most of all, he had given her a thirst for revenge.

"Her name is Kahlia," he whispered, unable to look away from the devastated look on the Doctor's face. "She was born on Gallifrey and her mother was Tussenii." He felt the baby kick him hard as the shame engulfed him completely. "These days they call her the Nightmare."


	57. The Doctor

A room full of broken things sometimes seemed like the only place in the universe where he belonged. Sometimes, everything else just seemed like it was held together too well, like they weren't trying to burst at the seams or simply collapse into nothing, and it was so wrong. This room was almost sacred in a way—the one place that felt safe enough to let everything out.

The Doctor’s eyes caught sight of a glass figurine, painted a rusty brown with old blood from a day that seemed like lifetimes ago. He was not as lost now as he was then, and not nearly as broken. He felt a little out of place in this room now. Now he was a man standing amongst the wreckage instead of being a part of it.

"Please go," he muttered quietly and a flicker in the face of a mirror told him that he'd been given his privacy. The ship held too many eyes these days.

He didn't break anything. It seemed like too much work. He didn't want to destroy anything today. He just wanted to sit and watch dust settle, and see that, no matter how much chaos this room saw, it just carried on existing anyway. So he turned a flipped over chair back on its legs and sat down, despite the chair's back having been ripped off.

He looked at the broken grandfather clock on the floor, with all its pieces scattered without ever a hope of being put back together and remembered the brief time in which he knew Madame de Pompadour. If she were here, she'd tell him to smarten up. She'd tell him that, if life were black and white, it would be boring. She'd tell him that great men only become great because they bear the burdens that others cannot.

It made him smile a little to think of that. Oh, had it ever been an ego trip and a half to have Madame de Pompadour herself thinking he was so wonderful. Rose didn't like it at all though.

Rose . . . What would Rose say? The Doctor remembered wondering rather bitterly if Rose was married or having children and how he tried so hard to be happy for her. Would she be happy for him if she could see him now?

" _Didn't take you long to forget me, did it?"_  He could imagine her saying that. She'd say it in that way that she did when she wanted to sound like she was just joking, but it was so poorly hidden beneath the disheartened voice and the sad, puppy-dog eyes.

" _I mean, technically my replacement is still you and it took me long enough to get used to that. He's not even the same species—not even a girl."_

"But he is blond," the Doctor muttered aloud, smiling a little. That would have made her smile too, if she had been there to hear it.

He wondered . . . in that parallel universe, was the human version of himself dealing with problems like this? Were he and Rose just happy and content without a care in the world? What would she ever say if the walls of the universe opened for just a day, and he placed his baby in her arms and told her all about how much better he was now? Would she be able to tell him the same? Would she be able to look at his son and just be happy for him?

She would be happy for him, he decided. She always worried that he would be alone and unhappy. She never wanted him to be alone, even if it meant that he was with someone else. She would be happy for him, just as he would be happy for her.

He wished that, for just a moment, he could speak to her and tell her he was happy. Even with everything that had gone wrong, even with the terrible things he had learned that day, and even with the terrible things he feared would come, he was still happy.

"Knock knock."

Donna didn't wait for an answer before she stepped in. She closed the door gently behind her and then strode, though rather carefully, over the broken glass towards him.

"Well, stand up then, dumbo," she said, stepping over the remains of the grandfather clock. "I can't very well hug you sitting down, can I?"

The Doctor sighed and pulled himself to his feet just as she reached him. He didn't really feel in the mood for hugs until she wrapped her arms tightly around his waist and suddenly it felt better—an anchor in the world, to keep him from drifting away with dreams and nightmares.

"I'm sorry your step-daughter is the Devil."

"Oh, no, I fought the Devil," he answered quietly, resting his chin on the top of her head. "He wasn't half so bad."

"That's funny," she said with a chuckle. "But that's not true, is it? I mean, you didn't  _really_  fight the Devil. Not the _actual_  Devil. I mean, the Devil's not real."

"Donna . . ."

"Right, sorry." She squeezed him a bit tighter, as if to remind herself why she was there, and let them stand together in silence for a few seconds. ". . . You're getting skinnier."

"No, I'm not."

"Yeah, you are," she answered stubbornly. "I can feel all of your ribs. I don't understand how you manage to hold yourself up—it's like when you see those really tall aspen trees in the wind and you're just waiting for one to snap right in half—"

" _Donna_."

"Oh yeah," she gave him another strong squeeze. "I'll try not to snap you in half."

"I'd appreciate it," he muttered. "And I hold myself up just fine, thank you."

After another minute or so she let go of him. It was strange how much a simple hug helped but, the moment she let go, he felt the weight return. He sighed and ran his hands through his hair, and all he could think to do to remain calm was to sit back down.

"So, what are you going to do?" she asked, sitting on the edge of an old desk and crossing her arms.

"What I have to."

"She's his daughter."

"She's a murderer."

"So is he."

It felt like a slap in the face when she said that so casually, with a shrug of her shoulders as though it didn't matter.

"Not anymore," he growled, his mouth suddenly feeling very dry.

"I'm sorry, Doctor," Donna said softly, looking him right in the eyes. "But you have to give her a chance."

"Why should I?" he shouted, not entirely sure where the anger had come from. "After all that she's done? You know, he gave her a chance when he escaped. He went to her and tried to save her, and she literally put a knife in his back. She murdered his children—her own brothers, Donna! She's had her chances and she threw them all away."

He knew, before she even said anything, exactly what was coming. He couldn't look her in the eye out of sudden shame. He turned his eyes to the broken things around him and felt a lump rising in his throat, a stinging in his eyes. He saw Donna crouch down in his peripheral vision and felt her hands take a hold of his, and suddenly he felt the need to start break apart the things around him into even smaller pieces. He wanted to scream, or cry, or just do  _something_  that didn't involve thinking about what Donna would say next.

"How many chances did Harry throw away?"

"Donna, don't." He wanted to leave, but she was holding his hand tightly to keep him in place. "Please don't."

"He doesn't lie the way you do, you know . . . and he doesn't just change the subject when he doesn't like it."

"Look, just stop it."

"I've asked him. I know what sort of things he did—without mercy or remorse."

He tried to pull away, but she gripped his hand harder and pulled it back. "I don't want to talk about this."

"You never gave up on him, Doctor," she said firmly. "Even when you should have, you didn't give up because he was your friend and you loved him."

"And look how many people died!"

He had shouted that, turning to stare angrily into her eyes. He had always known that he should never have tried so hard to save the Master—realistically, the price had just been too high—and he certainly didn't want to be reminded of it.

Donna didn't even flinch. She stared at him as though she could see his very soul and leaned in close. "She's his  _daughter_ ," she said slowly, clearly. "No matter what's she's done, that's his little girl. You might not think it and, hell, maybe he doesn't even think it, but if you kill his little girl without giving her a chance to change, he'll never forgive you."

"I tried," he answered quickly. "Donna, I tried. I really did. Ages ago, I begged her—really, properly begged her. She won't change. She just won't."

"It doesn't matter," Donna answered simply. "Remember your rules, Doctor, and follow them. You always give them a choice, even there's no hope of them taking it. You have to do it for his sake, not hers."

He hated it. He hated it so much, but she was right.

He muttered an agreement and she hugged him again and they sat together for a long time. In the silence, amongst the broken things, he thought about how soon the day was nearing when he would offer Kahlia her last chance and have her refuse it. And he looked forward to it.

It was four days later that the attack Harry had dreaded since the morning he discovered the denndi finally arrived. He had had many attacks over the course of the pregnancy, most of them small, but a few were rather traumatic. This one, however, was the one that everyone had worried about.

The Doctor thanked any force in the universe that cared to take responsibility for the fact that they were at least together when it happened.

The Doctor had been analyzing the results of some testing on the insect life in the lab for Harry while Shaun was being instructed on how to create his very first DNA reader when he first noticed something was off.

Harry was distracted. He kept staring off into nothing as though things were happening around him and, whenever Shaun said something to get his attention back, he seemed surprised to realize that other people were in the room. Harry was just strange in general these days, with his hormones going wild and his stress level high, so the Doctor didn't think much of it at first.

But then he nearly jumped out of his skin when Boris came in the room. He claimed he was fine but, even after Boris had left, the Doctor noticed that he was being careful to avoid any shadows. Slowly Harry's behaviour was taking more and more of the Doctor's attention and it seemed that even Shaun was starting to notice.

"Are you alright, Harry?" Shaun asked after watching the Time Lord stare up at the ceiling for almost a minute straight.

"Yes, I'm fine, thank you."

But he was stammering and he wouldn't look back down. The Doctor saw sweat gathering on his forehead and the way his eyes darted about the ceiling as though he were afraid. He could see something in the room, the Doctor knew, and Harry was hoping that if he didn't give it any attention then it would go away.

Maybe that would work. "Just leave him, Shaun," he said quietly. "Harry will let us know if he needs help. Won't you?"

"Yup," Harry answered in a strangely hoarse voice, as though he were holding his breath.

Give him some time, the Doctor thought to himself. He'd been getting better at controlling them. Harry could usually tell the difference between what was real and what wasn't these days—half the time they didn't even know it when he was having an attack of some sort.

The Doctor and Shaun tried to resume their work, but he couldn't focus. A glance at Shaun proved that he was faking it too, with the majority of his attention on Harry.

Harry was wringing his hands together nervously, moving his weight back and forth on his feet, and sweating a bit more now. It wasn't going away. Whatever it was, it wasn't going away. He could hear Harry's breathing steadily speeding up, the shaking of his fingers slowly getting worse. He decided to project some calming and happy thoughts in case Harry's mind reached out to him for comfort, but that was as much as he would do until he was asked.

It was nearly ten minutes before poor Harry finally cracked. "Doctor," he gasped suddenly, holding his hand outwards while keeping his eyes stubbornly focused on the ceiling. "Doctor, I can't. I can't do it. I just can't."

He was at Harry's side at the first word, clutching the hand stretched out to him. Saying just those simple words seemed to break away whatever was holding back the evils in his mind. Suddenly Harry was gasping for air as though he were having a panic attack, and the Doctor felt his hand shaking terribly in his own. Shaun grabbed Harry's other hand, but then looked to the Doctor to await instructions.

"Tell me what it is," he said quietly. "And I'll help."

"The baby's kicking."

The Doctor felt his hearts sink. They'd known this would happen. There was no way it couldn't happen. But he had hoped,  _really_  hoped that somehow they would get by without needing to face this.

"He's kicking. He's kicking," Harry said quickly. "He keeps on kicking."

"Don't repeat yourself, Harry. That makes it worse, remember?" he said sternly. "Don't focus on the kicking. Focus on me. Focus on my hand. Remember where we are?"

"I know where we are!" Harry shouted almost angrily. "That's not helping! I can hear him, Doctor."

"Hear what?" Shaun asked, and the Doctor fought the urge to slap him.

"I can hear him crying."

"But he's not crying," the Doctor said firmly, pulling on Harry's hand to encourage him to look at him. "He's not crying because he's not here, Harry."

"I know," Harry answered miserably, slowly and carefully bringing his eyes downward to meet the Doctor's. "He's dead. I  _know_  that he's dead. I just—oh!"

He had looked down. He looked down at the denndi on his chest and the Doctor saw his eyes flood with tears that threatened to fall. His lips started shaking and the Doctor could almost see Berran's face reflected in those brown eyes.

"Sit him down," Shaun muttered, reaching with his free hand to pull a chair over. "Sit down, Harold."

Harry obeyed and sat down in the chair. The Doctor was about to begin speaking again, trying to remind the other Time Lord where he was, but Shaun surprised him.

"I'll do this. Just answer my questions, Harry," Shaun said as calmly as possible. "Do you know where we are?"

"Yes," Harry answered, moving his eyes up towards the ceiling again.

"Tell me."

"I'm in the Bio Lab, in the TARDIS. The war is over," he continued, reciting off the important information like he had so many times before. "Berran is dead. Wilson is dead. Gallifrey is gone. I'm safe here."

"Good. Now just keep trying to remember that. What I want you to do now is focus on where you are and stop trying to fight away what you're seeing."

"What?" the Doctor interrupted sharply. "What are you talking about?"

"Just let me try this, alright? Harry, take all the energy you're using to push away those thoughts, and use it instead to focus on today. You can look at Berran. You can look at him because you know he's not really there. You can look at him because you're  _remembering_  him. And there's nothing wrong with remembering someone, is there?"

The Doctor stayed quiet and allowed Shaun to continue, though he wasn't sure how much faith he had in this idea. He continued to reinforce the idea that Berran was a memory, instead of just saying that he wasn't real. Then he started saying that it was good to remember, even if it hurt. For several minutes he spoke, and nothing seemed to happen. At least, nothing happened until Shaun asked the last thing the Doctor ever would have asked for.

"Can I see him?"

"Shaun!" the Doctor hissed. "What the hell are you thinking?"

Infuriatingly, Shaun completely ignored him and kept talking to Harry instead. "I would like to see him with you, Harry. I'll remember him with you. We can get past it together and then . . . we'll remember something good. Is that okay?"

To his surprise, Harry nodded his head. "It's awful," he warned.

"That's alright."

"We can handle it," the Doctor said, quickly realizing that this might be a wise plan after all. "I want to remember him too. And we'll handle the awful parts together."

He didn't know what he expected. He already knew the story and he'd caught the briefest glimpse just once from Harry's mind but, somehow, he still didn't expect what happened next.

Harry told them that he could hear Berran crying, but what the Doctor heard was screaming. His ears filled with the sound of a child screaming in pain and the air filled with a putrid smell of rot and decay and blood. Where he once saw that beautiful ball of flesh that held his baby, he now saw a child dying a horrible death.

Berran's face was coated with tears and blood, and the pus oozing from the terrible wounds in his face. His cheek was stitched directly to Harry's chest, and the skin surrounding the connection on both bodies was bright red and inflamed and showing all evidence of infection. The Doctor could see the darkness in the veins of Berran's face and Harry's chest—clear signs of the blood poisoning that would soon kill the boy. And oh, could he scream.

The Doctor stole a glance at Shaun and saw that his face had drained completely of colour, looking as though he might throw up any second. Every cry that came from the child was louder than the last, and it reminded the Doctor of the way Kindri had screamed on Gallifrey when he burned alive—as though every breath was a thousand times more torturous. The child's free hand grasped at air, at himself, at Harry, at anything in some vain hope that it might somehow ease the suffering. Some areas of the infected skin had necrotized so badly that their bodies were beginning to pull apart, the bindings slowly ripping through the flesh, and Harry had to hold Berran closer just to keep the boy together.

"I tried," Harry whispered through shaking breath. "I tried to feed him on my blood. I thought that maybe . . . if I could just give him enough—"

Another piercing shriek filled the air. The sound—oh, that sound! The Doctor couldn't imagine listening to something like this for ten minutes while just staring at the ceiling and fidgeting. It pained him so greatly to know that Harry could listen to something like that and just stay quiet, hoping it would pass and trying so hard not to draw attention to himself.

"This is where you come in, Doctor," Shaun said as firmly as he could manage while fighting the urge to vomit.

It was so hard, nearly impossible, to try to slip anything positive into Harry's mind with everything that was going on. He decided to forget about happy thoughts and instead focus on love. Let Harry know that he loved him and let Harry know how much he wished he could take that pain away. He clutched Harry's hand tightly and put everything he had into sending those thoughts, while Shaun began talking again.

"We've remembered the pain now, Harry," Shaun said, trying to keep his voice from shaking. "It's time to remember something else. Let's remember when that pain went away. Let Berran go to sleep now. Remember him going to sleep, when it didn't hurt him anymore."

The Doctor focused and Shaun spoke and Berran's screams began to lose some power. He coughed and sputtered and blood spat out of his mouth, but the tiny child mercifully began to die.

Shaun waited until the boy was nearly quiet before taking a deep breath. "A gentle breeze from Hushabye Mountain softly blows o'er Lullaby Bay," he sang quietly, despite how badly his voice shook now. "It fills the sails of boats that are waiting—waiting to sail your worries away."

The screaming reduced to crying, which slowed down to whimpering, until finally all they could hear was Berran and Harry's breathing over Shaun's quiet voice. The Doctor willed Harry to remember the boy sleeping—sleeping as he would have when he was alive. With all his messages of love and comfort, he desperately searched Harry's mind for a memory of Berran sleeping without the blood and fear.

"So close your eyes on Hushabye Mountain . . . wave goodbye to cares of the day."

He found one. A perfect image of a beautiful and healthy Berran sleeping peacefully in Harry's arms. He employed all the skill he had been building up to push that image forward. If Kahlia could force nightmares on people, surely he could force a good memory?

"And watch your boat from Hushabye Mountain . . ." Berran's breathing slowed, nearly stopped. The blood was fading, leaving behind intact and healthy skin. "Sail far away from Lullaby Bay."

A lullaby for a dead child to soothe the heart of a mourning father. The Doctor remembered the TARDIS singing Gallifreyan lullabies to him after the war and it always helped. Remembering his children as going to sleep was much more bearable than remembering that they were dead. It didn't hurt as much to think of a calm and peaceful sleep over the pain and the fear he knew they felt before their lives were snatched away. All his children and grandchildren . . . just sleeping. Dreaming of some better tomorrow.

"Take him," Shaun whispered. "Doctor, take him and give him something to make him sleep. Dear God, just let the man sleep, please."

When the Doctor looked at Harry, his eyes looked blank and so very far away. He felt around in Harry's mind a bit and realized that it had almost completely shut down. It was his only defense mechanism left, to mentally go to sleep along with Berran—to allow a dream to take over so that he didn't have to remember reality, even if it was only for a little while.

The Doctor spoke as softly as he could, instructing Harry to stand up and come with him. He led the man back to their bedroom and helped him climb into the bed. He could still see Berran, huddled up against Harry's chest, as he pulled a blanket over him. Harry's eyes looked almost lifeless and he didn't even blink when the Doctor slid the needle into his skin. The shot would make him sleep and keep him calm, to stop the nightmares from returning.

He bent down to kiss Harry's forehead and to run his hand gently over the denndi, mentally breaking the connection between them so that Berran's face disappeared from his vision.

"I love you," he whispered, even though he was sure Harry wasn't listening. Sometimes he felt terrible that he didn't say that very often. He never was one for saying the important things. He should really try to change that.

When he returned to the lab, there was a distinct smell of vomit. The Doctor eyed the queasy look on Shaun's face and the redness about his eyes, then spotted the dust bin in the corner where the smell was coming from. He was impressed, really, that Shaun had managed to keep everything in until he was left alone.

"I'll clean that in a minute," Shaun said, sounding rather out of breath. "But listen . . . this ship is telepathic, yes?"

"Yes."

"And that screwdriver thing you have? That too?"

He nodded, raising a curious eyebrow. "To a degree, yes."

"So, you know how to use that technology? How to make it?"

His hand subconsciously slipped into his pocket, gripping his trusty screwdriver. "Yes, of course."

"I want you to teach me," Shaun said with determination, though he still looked rather ill. "I have an idea. Teach me how to make telepathic machines and I can help Harry."

"It's not exactly primary school science, Shaun."

"I don't care!"

That was the first time the Doctor had ever heard Shaun raise his voice and he doubted he would hear it again any time soon. This gentle soul of a man had some spark in him when it mattered. That was good to know.

"What just happened there," Shaun continued more calmly, shaking his head a little. "He just stood there. He just stood there and fidgeted like he was just trying to work out a problem. If he can just  _stand_  there like that . . . no man should be that used to listening to that kind of screaming. It's  _wrong_ , Doctor. It's just wrong."

"I know."

"I'm going to fix it. Or at least I'm going to try," Shaun turned and picked the bin up off the floor, taking it toward the bathroom. "But I need you to teach me first."

"Okay," the Doctor answered without another thought. "Okay, I'll teach you."

"Thank you." And Shaun vanished through the door.


	58. Shaun

Shaun had a knack for this really. It took an awful lot of note-taking and focus, but it still seemed to come to him easy. All his life, he wasn't entirely sure what to do with himself. He knew he wasn't stupid, but he couldn't seem to find his talent or anything in the world that interested him enough to pursue. That seemed to be changing now.

When Donna spoke about the beginning of her travels with the Doctor, she spoke of being inspired by the idea of living a life unrestricted by time or space or even language. Wilfred was inspired by the knowledge that life extended so far beyond Earth. Jack was inspired by the Doctor, all on his own. But, when Shaun stepped through those doors and was introduced to all that wonder, he was inspired by the ship herself.

It was the technology that caught his interest more than anything. While the others were talking about how pretty or useful something was, Shaun was thinking about how it worked or what else it could do. This was technology beyond what humans even dreamt of. Living machines, telepathic machines,  _empathetic_  machines! No one else seemed to notice the sounds that the ship made seemed to be directly linked to the Doctor's mood and that any unpleasant day was often accommodated with soothing melodies from the ship. The machines here weren't the Doctor's tools, they were his teammates.

Shaun was proud of his gravity manipulators, his first real success with such advanced technology, but this would be his first masterpiece. With plenty of help from the Doctor, he had created a telepathic recorder and amplifier. It was a small, simple looking little chunk of machinery that he had placed inside a plastic box that could be worn around the neck or hung on a belt, but it would do wonders.

The Doctor provided the recording. He wrapped his fingers around the device and focused every positive emotion he had into it—hope, love, peace, happiness, everything he usually used to bring Harry down from an attack. The device would be triggered if it read any strong negative telepathic waves coming from the person wearing it and respond by replaying the recording at an amplified level.

It would take them a few weeks to get it working properly. Shaun would test it by wearing it and then getting the Doctor to slap him—a quick and easy way to create the negative emotions needed to wear it. His cheeks were often sore, but he didn't care once the feeling of euphoria began to slip into his mind.

It might not have been an invention that was entirely his own, but he could claim full ownership of the idea, and for that he would feel the greatest sense of fulfillment and pride when he was able to present the finished product. That simple little cube would help Harry fight back the demons in his head and Shaun hoped beyond hope that it would prevent him from ever watching the horror of his child's death again.

These days, he hardly ever left the lab. Both the Doctor and Harry wanted him around constantly to assist with their projects now that they were aware of how well he learned.

"Jack knows the technology and he's great for following instruction," the Doctor whispered to him once, as though terrified of being overheard. "But it  _is_  nice to have someone who wants to expand upon everything like you do. It's been a long time since I've met someone so clever, Shaun."

Being told something like that by a centuries old alien who could speak of time travel technology as though it were like changing a light bulb was more than enough encouragement. On top of it all, Donna was so impressed with him that she couldn't seem to keep away from him these days. Suddenly he was living a very good life.

Harry was really starting to lose it though. The Doctor told them not to worry and that it was to be expected with the combination of the progressing pregnancy and Harry's 'condition'. For the most part it had just been the occasional aggression or confusion, but now that the denndi was the size of a small watermelon, the man was slipping into the most bizarre episodes.

The first one had been at the breakfast table. Who knew how long he had been unresponsive because nobody noticed until Jack asked Harry a question and he didn't answer. He just sat there, completely unresponsive to anything, for several minutes. Donna even tried pinching his arm and he didn't even blink. When he finally came back to himself, he didn't believe them when they told him what happened.

The second was when they were working in the Doctor's lab on some machinery and Harry very suddenly slammed his cup of coffee down on the table top, spilling it everywhere.

"Can  _somebody_  get me a goddamned cigar!?" he shouted.

Shaun just froze in his seat and stared at Harry with wide eyes, completely unsure of how to react. He thought for a moment that it was a joke, but the look on Harry's face said otherwise.

The Doctor, however, wasn't the slightest bit bothered. "You can't smoke, Harry," he answered casually, continuing with his work. "Think of the baby."

"No, no, you listen here," Harry argued, jabbing his finger at the Doctor's chest. "I'm older  _and_ smarter than you, so I—"

"It's my ship," the Doctor interrupted bluntly. "So, no."

"Would you not fight with me for once!?"

"You  _love it_  when I fight with you!" the Doctor shouted dramatically. "Now shut up and sit down because you're not going to start smoking!"

Shaun stayed frozen and watched the way Harry glared at the Doctor. He expected a proper fight to break out, but the Doctor went back to his tinkering as though nothing happened and, after a minute, Harry sat down in his seat.

"I do love it," Harry muttered with a shrug.

When he glanced up, the Doctor was smirking.

Then there was the moment in the Bio Lab when Harry randomly blurted out: "Oh, holy hell!" and put his hands flat on the table.

"What is it?" Jack asked, leaning forward to glance at the spot on the table he was touching.

"Oh, nothing really," Harry answered quietly, staring down at his fingers in seeming amazement. "I just realized that I'm actually alive. I can think and everything."

Shaun leaned back in his seat to look to the Doctor for help, but the other Time Lord just shook his head slowly. The Doctor later explained to them that now that the denndi was so developed, when Harry's mind became confused it was likely receiving input from the baby to try to make sense of it all. Something like realizing you're alive might be strange to them, but to a developing baby it was perfectly normal.

"He's not going crazy or anything," the Doctor assured them. "Well . . . not again anyway. And Jack! You're not allowed to hit him anymore."

"What if he hits me first?"

"You'll survive."

There were things happening all over the ship and, for some reason, people didn't seem to hide much around him. Everyone complained about the secrets kept on the ship, and Shaun wasn't sure if he was missing something or if it was just that nobody bothered to keep secrets from _him_.

Harry was working on stealth technology to keep a person cloaked from scanning equipment, saying he was inspired by some mystery door on the ship, but no one else seemed to know what he was doing. Shaun also knew that the Doctor was trying to learn more about Kahlia—specifically where she was and what kind of an army she had. He was hunting her. No one seemed to know about that either.

Wilfred and Donna had both mentioned to him that they had seen both Harry and the Doctor from the future. All Donna told him about it was that she had to assist with a surgery, while Wilfred told him he had to assist the Doctor with reattaching his own fingers. Jack told him about some terrible things that happened on Earth before the Doctor summoned him, and Shaun felt really terrible that no one else seemed to know that Jack was grieving a lover. Jack told no one else about it, saying that there was no point.

Maybe it was because Shaun came to the TARDIS so much later than everyone else that he hadn't experienced their previous behaviour. He's been told that the Doctor had been so sad and lonely while Harry had been terribly cruel, but he couldn't really believe it as all he'd ever seen was a happy couple. The Doctor had so many people in his life and he seemed to be happy with it, while Harry seemed perfectly lovely and gentle unless he was having an attack. Shaun had no preconceived ideas about them . . . maybe that was what made them decide he was trustworthy?

When he finally finished his telepathic amplifier, Shaun wasn't exactly sure how to give it to Harry. It felt a bit silly really but, for whatever reason, it made him feel a little uncomfortable to hand somebody something and say, "I invented something specifically to contain your craziness".

He was sitting on one of the bar stools in the kitchen holding it while everyone else was chattering away about plans for the day. Harry's weird blue little cat thing, or squirrel, or whatever in the world it was, kept jumping up next to him and wrapping her long fingers around it, trying to steal it away. Finally, Donna got fed up watching him wrestle it away from Lily and snatched the little cube from his hands.

"Harry." She marched up to him, slipped the cord holding the cube around his neck, and then, without warning, slapped him hard across the face.

It happened so quickly and unexpectedly that everyone else jumped and stared with open mouths. "Donna!" Harry barked, holding his hand against his quickly reddening cheek. "What in the hell are you—oh . . . that's quite nice." His hand abandoned his cheek to pick up the cube and look at it, then his eyes automatically glanced over at the Doctor. "What is it?"

"Shaun made it," Donna answered, placing her hands on her hips and smirking proudly. "He  _invented_  it, just for you. It'll help keep your attacks away. Now what have you to say to my genius husband?"

Harry didn't actually say anything. He didn't really have a chance. The two of them made eye contact and Shaun saw something startlingly strong in Harry's face but, before there was any chance to speak, Wilfred came between them so he could clap Shaun on the back.

"Way-hey-hey!" Wilfred cried out happily. "Well done, lad! Look at you lot, making an old man feel like a fool with all your fancy gadgets and cleverness."

Shaun felt a bit of blood rushing to his cheeks so he simply turned back towards his cup of tea, though he could still feel Harry's eyes watching him from across the room.

He was pleased to see over the following weeks that his device worked. Harry still spaced out or got confused occasionally, but it did prevent any major attacks. He and the Doctor fought less and seemed more dependent on each other's company every day. Shaun had seen them relaxing in the library sometimes, each with their own book, holding hands. The amusing part was that they just wouldn't let go. The Doctor's fingers were long enough to hold a book and turn a page with his little finger, but Harry had to keep his book in his lap so that he could turn pages without needing to let go of the Doctor's hand.

The Doctor also seemed to be getting more comfortable with showing affection in front of other people, much to Donna's dismay. "It was cute at first," she said irritably one day. "But I just went out to go get a cup of tea and they were snogging in the hallway! Like a couple of kids! Got his shirt half open—and the hands—and the-the huge eyes—"

"What do you mean by huge eyes?"

She looked at him as though she were thoroughly annoyed he would ask such a question. "It's like when a cat is looking at you in the dark and their eyes are all—" she gestured with her hands to show massively dilated pupils. "The Doctor didn't even really say anything, either. He just laughed and slinked off with him to some other room. Don't shake either of their hands until they've gone in the shower, got it?"

"Hang on, I don't know what you're going on about," Shaun said, frowning in confusion. "Harry's eyes have been doing that a lot lately. We'll be working and suddenly his pupils get all dilated. The Doctor said that was just happening because of the pregnancy."

"Oh yeah?" Donna crossed her arms and smirked at him. "And then what did he do?"

Shaun thought about it for a second and then felt his cheeks heating up again. "He, uh, said he would take care of him . . ."

"And let me guess, they both took off and didn't come back for over an hour?" she laughed and shook her head. "Hate to break it to you, darling, but all that pregnancy is doing is making him want a good shag. And the Doctor is like some teenaged kid who is only too happy to stop everything to go 'take care' of him, even if it's in the middle of the bleeding hallway. What if it had been my Grandad instead of me? Oh,  _what if it had been a few minutes later_!?"

She wouldn't stop talking about it until Shaun was able to distract her with the baby room. The two of them had been working together to convert Harry's old bedroom into the nursery. It hadn't taken long to move Harry properly into the Doctor's room—all he really had was some pretty metal ornament on the wall and a closet full of clothes. After that, they had a blank slate really.

The Time Lords had given their blessing to do what they pleased with it, though Shaun suspected that had only been decided because it gave Donna her own project on the ship. They had scrubbed down every surface together, and Shaun had brought Jack in to help rip up the carpet and install a new red one. They didn't need to paint the walls as it turned out they were programmable. The trouble was that the ship figured out what you wanted telepathically, so it took Donna several tried before the walls took on a forest-like image. All four walls looked like you were standing in a forest with trees all around, except the trees had silver leaves.

Donna told him that both the Doctor and Harry had spoken about their home world to her and that they both mentioned a few key points—red grass, silver leaves, orange sky, and a clearing in the woods where they used to play as boys. "Just like when they were kids," she said proudly as they worked on painting the ceiling a burnt orange. "Wouldn't you want our baby to look up and see a blue sky every day?"

"Most days," Shaun answered with a smile. "Though I wouldn't mind if some days they saw an orange sky instead."

The furniture he made was moved in as he finished it. He'd carry it to its rightful place, then to the next when Donna changed her mind, and often a third time too. Eventually, every piece found its own home and the room began to look more and more like a proper nursery.

Donna had begun buying toys and blankets, and there was a little bookshelf where she had been building a collection of story books. The Doctor even dug out some old ones he had. He came in once with oldest and most tattered look pile of pages Shaun had ever seen and he knew, without looking, that Donna must have been horrified by the thought of such a grubby looking item ruining her beautiful nursery. She tried to politely suggest that the book go elsewhere—somewhere it was less likely to get further damaged—trying to avoid physically taking it from his hands.

"It's from home," the Doctor said quietly, with a slightly embarrassed look on his face. "I used to read it out at bedtimes, you know, before I started travelling again . . . I, uh, I actually gave it to one of my girls when she had her own kids but . . . well, I got it back anyway."

"Family heirlooms, Donna," Shaun offered merrily. "You said so yourself that every nursery ought to have a family heirloom."

"Yeah, I did, didn't I?" Donna said, making herself smile widely. "It'll be perfect then."

A few other strange and ancient items found their way into the nursery as well. It turned out that the Doctor had a few things stashed away from their homeworld that appeared from nowhere—a tapestry of a city in a glass dome, some kind of globe that looked to be made of glass with black and burgundy stones inside that Shaun swore could move when they weren't looking, and a little silver ball that simply sat on top of the bookshelf.

Sometimes Harry would come in for a look, but the nursery seemed to make him terribly nervous and he never stayed long. The Doctor told them that Harry never had the chance to salvage anything from Gallifrey and Shaun sometimes wondered if it was the way the room looked that drove him out. He'd voiced that opinion to the Doctor but was assured everything about the baby was rather nerve-wracking for Harry and that it had nothing to do with decoration.

They were installing lights the day it happened. Donna had decided that the traditional lights were too boring and too harsh for a baby's eyes, so instead they were installing nearly two dozen smaller lights all over the ceiling that looked rather like stars in the dark. Shaun was standing on a chair when the entire ship lurched and he tumbled downward, earning a scream from Donna and a rather painful bash on the knee.

"Everyone, find something to hold on to!" the Doctor's voice echoed over a speaker system around them.

Well, they could sit there and hold on, or they could find out what was happening. He and Donna didn't even need to say anything to each other. Shaun grabbed her hand and together they clutched anything close enough to grab on to as they fought the turbulence and made it out into the hallway. As they hurried towards the control room, Jack flew by them in a flurry with his coat flapping behind him and they heard Wilfred struggling along somewhere further back.

The ship rocked and shook as though it were trying to spit them out and the engines screamed terribly. When they pushed open the doors to the control room and saw the Doctor frantically rushing around the console mashing buttons, Shaun was surprised to see a look of glee in his eyes.

"One ship," the Doctor shouted over the wailing of the TARDIS. "Approximately two hundred soldiers, basic shielding, some pretty nasty,  _nasty_ weapons, but it's just the  _one_  ship!"

"Are you going to talk rubbish all day or are you gonna tell us what the hell is going on?" Donna shouted back.

The doors opened behind them again and Harry and Wilfred stumbled inside. "Doctor!"

"I tracked her down," the Doctor cried out happily and shoved at the screen above his head so that it swivelled around and let them see it. "And she's only got one ship! Ha!"

They could see it on the screen—a sleek looking ship, shaped rather like an arrowhead and glittering in the light of a nearby sun. It was obviously meant for battle, looking sturdy while being incredible fast. It zipped back and forth before them like some sort of insect charging through the stars.

"What's it doing?" Wilfred called out.

Shaun saw the look in the Doctor's eyes grow more excited, simply alive with the thrill of it and all his teeth gleaming in wicked grin. "Running."

"Doctor!" Harry called out again over the noise.

"But we've got no weapons!" Jack shouted. "Why's she running when we can't hurt her?"

"She didn't think I would find her and she didn't want me to know she's not as powerful as she let on," the Doctor answered quickly, rushing around to the other side of the console again. "That beautiful Star on Godforge did a hell of a job! She's weak and she doesn't want me materializing the TARDIS inside her ship."

" _Doctor_!"

"You can't run from me, Kahlia," the Doctor hissed, looking as though he were enjoying the chase far too much. "She doesn't want us on the ship if she doesn't have us under control first, so I say that's exactly what we do. Right here, right now! Come on, you little menace!"

Harry stumbled forward and nearly knocked Shaun over. He managed to catch his balance as the ship rocked again and looked back, seeing the absolutely petrified and pale face of Harry. Donna got a quick look at Harry too before she stuck her fingers in her mouth and whistled so loud that she could have burst an eardrum.

"OI! DOCTOR!" she shouted at the top of her lungs.

Finally, the Doctor glanced over, his eyebrows locking together when he saw Harry. " _What_?"

Harry stared back at the Doctor for a long moment, seemingly oblivious to the constant motion of the ship as he raised his hand and touched his fingers to his own forehead as though he were in great pain. "Can't you hear them?"


	59. Harry

One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. As though it had never left, as though it had always been there, as though it would never, ever leave. The sound of drums, pounding in his head, coming closer and closer. A call to war.

One. Two. Three. Four.

What if it was never really gone?

His mind was trying so hard to readjust to the old sound that, for a moment, it was all he could think about. Everything around him was just blur and noise, simple background to the powerful and never-ending drums. There were voices speaking in tongues he didn't know and saying names he didn't recognize.

"Can't you hear them?" he asked. "That noise!"

One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.

Sparks flew through the air like tiny fireworks and gravity pulled at him from the side, but he managed to stop himself from falling by holding tightly to the console. Time seemed too slow and his mind was spinning, trying to find a place where that noise was supposed to belong.

Through all the chaos, he saw the Doctor's face—his oldest enemy and friend. He was speaking to him, though they were words he couldn't understand. The Doctor kept repeating some name that he was unfamiliar with. He should know that name, he knew but, whenever he thought he had it figured out, the unbearable drumming interrupted his thoughts.

Those eyes were looking at him, right into him. He saw desperation and a hint of fear. The Doctor was worried about him, but why? And that name . . . whose name was that?

One, two, three, four. Ever louder, ever closer. Calling to him forever and ever. One, two, three, four.

"Harry!"

Something warm touched his hand and his mind seemed to snap back into place. Harry . . . isn't that what he was calling himself these days? He glanced down and saw where the warmth had come from—the Doctor had taken his hand. There they were, fingers tangled together like they belonged that way, and gleaming on the Doctor's finger was a golden ring.

The Doctor's wedding ring. "My ring," he whispered to himself, turning his eyes to his own left hand and finding a ring there too. Such a simple thing that meant so much. Even with his mind in a panic and scrambling to make sense of a situation, even with that dreadful pounding in his head, he knew what a wedding ring meant.

And he remembered.

"It's Kahlia," the Doctor told him. "She's doing this to you. The drums  _aren't real_ , Harry. They've been gone a whole year, remember?"

One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.

Just like the heartbeat of a Time Lord. Just like the quickened heartbeat of a frightened girl running away from an angry father about to deliver a sure punishment. The drums were too fast. Too fast and too high—false.

He made sure to look the Doctor right in the eye, to let him know that he was with them again. "Don't lose her."

The Doctor grinned and turned back to the controls and Harry paused a moment to focus his mind. He followed the pathway Kahlia had paved between them, connecting their minds. His consciousness soared towards hers and it screamed with rage. He knew the second she felt it because the connection suddenly snapped and she withdrew so quickly that it left him feeling dizzy.

"Don't lose her!"

"I'm not!"

Harry dashed around the console while the Doctor worked and found the transmitter. He could lock onto Kahlia's ship and broadcast a message through every single speaker on board for every single person to hear.

He snatched at the microphone on the console and held it to his mouth. "Kahlia!" he roared into it. "You have been a  _very_  bad girl!"

"We have hostages," a voice answered instantly. The voice of a man, presumably a soldier, broadcast over the TARDIS speakers just as Harry had broadcast to theirs. "There are innocent people on this ship my Lord Master and Lord Doctor," the voice continued. "If you do not back down, they will die."

"Harry, give me this," the Doctor muttered quickly, taking the microphone from him. "Listen here, Kahlia, this is your chance. If you give up now, I can promise that you will not be harmed. No one here will lay a finger on you. I will take you straight to the Shadow Proclamation to be tried for your crimes fairly and this will all be over. Please, just please, don't take this any further than it's already gone."

There was a long pause during which the Doctor's eyes looked hopeful, but Harry knew better. He waited patiently, and the voice returned.

"Desist, or the prisoners will die."

Harry gave the Doctor a nod, giving him permission to stop. The TARDIS engines slowed down, and they watched the ship on the console's screen gaining space between them. Harry stretched his mind out to Kahlia, before she slipped away, and forced the sound into her head.

One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.

He wanted her to hear it too. The call to war. And always getting closer.

The Doctor kicked his foot against the base of the console. "Damn it."

Harry dropped the connection and let her go, suddenly exhausted. He must have slumped a little bit or something because, not only was Wilfred at his side, but Donna was there too, with her hand on his back. His head ached, swimming again in confusion as it readjusted to the sudden silence.

"How many prisoners do you think she took?" Jack asked.

The Doctor sighed heavily and lifted his hands to tangle them up in his hair. "The real question is how many are still alive?"

"She'll have killed anyone who wasn't useful before you ever found her," Harry answered, rubbing his eyes as he waited for the dizziness to stop. "She won't have many left . . . she doesn't want prisoners, just hostages or workers. She only keeps those that she thinks she can benefit from."

"So what do we do?" Shaun asked.

Harry opened his eyes, despite the way his vision swam, to see the Doctor looking at him as though he carried the world on his shoulders. "We rest," the Doctor said quietly. "There's a planet nearby—uninhabited by anything sentient as far as I could tell when I was there, but rather amazing plant life. You'll like it, Harry."

The Doctor continued talking, but Harry wasn't listening to him anymore. He saw the heavy look in those eyes, despite how calm he was trying to sound. Damn that Doctor of his for being so clever and so bloody noble, and Harry had no idea how to stop him.

"I don't think I've got the energy for studying that much right now," Harry answered quietly, instinctively bringing up a hand to rest on the denndi. "Let's go after the baby is born."

The Doctor smiled and glanced at the denndi, but Harry could see the heartbreak in his eyes. "No," he said softly. "We'll be much too busy then, don't you think?"

He wanted to slap that man. He wanted to kiss him and then grab him by the arms and shake him hard. But he just didn't have enough energy to do anything but stare at him.

He glanced around the room, but nobody else seemed to know what was happening. They all just found something to hold onto while the Doctor started the engines again. Donna and Jack both looked a little suspicious, but nobody had worked it out yet.

He should have just kept his mouth shut.

No prisoners. Only hostages.

As long as Harry was carrying the baby, he couldn't regenerate, and forcing regeneration would just kill him. Kahlia didn't want him now if she couldn't hurt him, and she wouldn't terminate the baby when he would be so useful for her tortures. But the  _Doctor_  . . . If they landed on an uninhabited planet the Doctor wouldn't need to worry about Kahlia taking more prisoners or killing any bystanders. She could take him and keep him until the time was right for her to use him.

And, in the meantime, the Doctor could find a way to save those innocent people. Maybe even save Kahlia.

"I want to go to Earth," Harry said quickly. "Look at how big this denndi is, I'm not running around some planet to brush up on my botany. I want to sit in Grandfather's house and sleep in and drink tea and do nothing."

"No, you don't!" Jack snorted in disbelief.

"Shut up. Yes, I do," Harry continued, shooting Jack an angry look. "I do. I want that. I'm the size of a bloody walrus carrying  _your_  baby, Doctor. My back hurts, my feet hurt, and I've been very good with not moaning about it! I am  _so_  uncomfortable and at this point I want to play the pregnant card and say that I don't want any more adventures until this baby is born! Got it?"

The Doctor smiled at him, a smile that was far too kind. "Yes, dear," he said, though without the expected teasing tone. "Of course, you're right. We'll sleep in, drink tea, and do nothing. You need a good bit of rest and taking care of with our little monster getting so heavy, definitely . . . But not on Earth."

"Why not?" Grandfather asked.

"All that noise and pollution just won't do," the Doctor answered casually and began inputting controls for the TARDIS again. "People drive him crazy anyway, so it's probably best to go somewhere without them. And a pregnant man will definitely attract unwanted attention. No, no, Earth won't do at all."

"Doctor—"

"Harry," the Doctor interrupted, meeting his eyes with a look that clearly stated he would not bend on this. "It's my ship and this is my decision. Not Earth."

They landed on the Doctor's isolated planet without another word. The Doctor opened the TARDIS doors wide so that they could see the gorgeous and thriving plant life outside, but Harry couldn't even bring himself to pretend it was interesting. The baby was kicking and communicating feelings of stress, probably from being shaken around so much. He hadn't been lying about the sore back and feet either.

"I'm going to bed," he announced quietly, then slipped off on his own.

Harry was still awake when the Doctor joined him, though he pretended not to be. He kept one eye open just the tiniest crack so that he could watch the other man. He knew the Doctor well enough to know that he often let go of his brave face when he thought he was alone, and Harry was hoping to catch him now so that he could build some argument on it. But he saw nothing. The Doctor's eyes still held that heavy look, but he was calm. His breath did not shake, and his fingers did not tremble. He stood tall and strong, with no signs of weakness.

When the Doctor climbed into the bed beside him, he gently nudged at Harry until he rolled onto his back, then the Doctor nuzzled up close to him. He laid with his head on Harry's shoulder, his lips only an inch away from the denndi as he brought up his hand to stroke the swollen flesh and mutter quietly to it.

Harry had woken up in the night before to find the Doctor doing this—speaking to the baby and making all sorts of promises. Tonight's promises were a little different than most. When the Doctor usually promised adventure, tonight he promised to come home, and when he usually promised freedom to travel the universe, tonight he promised love, no matter what may happen. Harry could feel the Doctor's fingers lightly dancing over the denndi and his emotions projecting from him like soft ripples, and then he felt the baby respond. Another emotion projected from within and Harry helped it reach the Doctor—a returned feeling of love, as if to say, " _I know_ ".

When Harry woke up in the morning, the Doctor proved true to his word. They had overslept and, when Harry tried to get out of bed, the Doctor pulled him back. He lay back as the Doctor covered him in kisses and touched him in all the right places. He whispered words from home in Harry's ear—traditional and sentimental words from some ancient story that the more romantically inclined Time Lords recited to their loved ones before going on a long journey. He tried to forget everything else and just focus on how it felt to be one with another person as, in between gasps and gentle groans, the Doctor swore to remember him and miss him and to spend all their moments apart thinking of when he would come home again. Oh, those old Gallifreyan stories made it too easy for any fool to melt a heart with words.

Harry took his time in the shower, feeling a bit unprepared to face the rest of the TARDIS crew just yet. The Doctor only stayed in with him just long enough to give himself a quick scrub before pecking on kiss on Harry's cheek and another on the denndi, then took off. When Harry finally summoned the energy to go out there and smile like he meant it, he found the Doctor waiting for him again.

He was ushered back into bed and the Doctor proudly presented a special breakfast on a silver tray that he claimed was given to him by Emperor Octavian himself. "Fancied me, you know," he bragged as he carefully placed the tray on the bed beside Harry. "Well, most people do. You know, devilishly charming, intellectually brilliant, and all that."

"And so modest, too."

"Did I mention how handsome I am?"

"You've got hairy hands."

"It's manly!"

Harry had barely started on his breakfast before the Doctor pulled the blankets away from his legs and grabbed at his feet. At first Harry thought he was trying to tickle him so he kicked him hard enough to knock him off the mattress and, after some poorly acted sulking, the Doctor explained that he had only intended to give him a foot rub.

"That's what I'm supposed to do, isn't it?" the Doctor asked merrily as he seized hold of Harry's foot again. "You said yesterday you get sore feet."

"Well, I do."

"Right. So, I thought I should probably offer a foot rub before it gets worse and I get the whole you-did-this-to-me speech."

"You  _did_  do this to me," Harry answered with an annoyed huff.

"Right. And that's why you're getting a foot rub instead of being called a princess and being told to suck it up. Now shut up and eat your breakfast; I'm focusing here."

And so he got what he asked for, really. For the next week they stayed in bed all morning, just to sleep or have sex or talk for a while. During the day Harry would tinker in the lab for a bit, go to the baby room to discuss what had been done and what could still be done as it made Donna so happy, or play a game of crib with Wilfred. Shaun had grown as quiet as ever, while Jack had stopped almost all teasing aside from his new favourite nickname 'baby-mama'.

For a little while he could almost forget.

Then came the night when Harry woke to the sound of the cloister bell ringing through the TARDIS. He tried to get out of the bed, but his limbs felt absurdly heavy. His head swam when he tried to sit up and his hands didn't seem to do what his mind told them to. He wasn't sure what was happening until he made out the shape of the Doctor moving hurriedly around their room and an empty syringe on the nightstand table.

"Doctor." His voice sounded slurred when he said it, and his eyes rolled towards the wall even though he was trying hard to stop them.

"Don't try to get up," the Doctor answered quickly, and suddenly he was crouched next to the bed, putting on his tie as he looked up at Harry. "You won't be able to walk, so don't get up."

"You. . ." His lips felt numb and words spilled forth clumsily. "You drugged me."

"Yes, I did," the Doctor said with a quick nod. "You'll be fine in the morning and the baby is perfectly safe. Just  _don't_  try to get up. Now listen, remember that knife I made for you on Godforge? Make sure you carry it with you, all the time. Harry, do you know what I'm saying?"

"Carry the knife," he repeated slowly. "Don't pull out the IV's, don't touch the stitches, and don't try to get up."

"That's right," the Doctor just about laughed but his eyes looked worried, and his hands reached out to land on either side of Harry's face, stopping him from looking anywhere else. "And this is important, Harry, this is so important . . . I love you. I really, really love you and I  _will_  come home. Alright? I'm coming home, I promise."

"I lo—" he stammered for a moment, his tongue suddenly refusing to obey, but the Doctor waited patiently for him to get it right. "Doctor . . . I love you too."

Suddenly the world starting spinning all over again and he felt like he was falling. It took him a few seconds to realize that the Doctor was pushing him back, helping him to lie down in the bed again. Blankets were pulled over top of him and a hand was squeezing his. Lips were pressed against his forehead, his cheek, his mouth, the denndi. Something wet landed on his cheek but he couldn't think clearly enough to know what it might be.

"You'll be okay," the Doctor said with an oddly breathy voice. "You'll be just fine. Wilfred will take care of you, and so will the others. I've sealed all their rooms, so they'll be safe. Don't worry about them. You just need to take care of our baby, alright?"

Why did his voice sound like that? Like he couldn't breathe? Harry reached out his hand towards the Doctor's neck, just to be sure that there was nothing there choking him, but felt nothing. He felt something wet touch his face again as the Doctor planted one more, prolonged kiss on his lips.

"I'm so sorry, Harry," the Doctor whispered shakily. "I am so, so sorry."

And that was it. The Doctor pulled away from him and Harry felt strangely empty and cold. The only physical reminder of the Doctor ever having been there were the crumbled sheets beside Harry and the droplets on his face. He watched the Doctor walk across the room, adjusting his suit jacket as he went, looking his best as always.

Sounds blurred together and Harry's own breathing seemed unbearably loud even over the sound of the cloister bell. When the bedroom door burst open, Harry could barely make any sense of the way the soldiers were shouting. They swarmed the room with guns pointed at the Doctor, and Harry didn't hear that man make a single sound until one soldier came too close to the bed and suddenly he roared. The soldier scurried back to the others like a frightened dog and he saw the fury in the Doctor's eyes for just a moment.

He could barely make it out, lying paralyzed as he was. The Doctor held a small metal device in tightly in his hand, with his thumb pressed firmly over a button on it. The soldiers circled around him like animals while the Doctor explained exactly how a dead-man's switch and a self destruct worked wonderfully together and how there wasn't a single person on the TARDIS that was any good to them dead. He would only neutralize the switch once they were on the Nightmare's ship and well away from the TARDIS and her inhabitants.

"She can have me," the Doctor said loudly, confidently. "But everyone else stays here, safe and free."

"You're the only one we came for," one of the soldier's replied with a cruel grin.

The Doctor just nodded stiffly. "I know."

Harry tried again to get up as they led the Doctor away, but his body simply refused. He kicked and fought but achieved little more than some rather ungraceful twitches.

"Doctor!" he cried out with a frustrated yell.

But the soldiers paid him no mind, while the Doctor simply looked back over his shoulder with grim eyes and continued walking. Their footsteps echoed in his mind with the sound of the TARDIS cloister bell and then silence fell. Harry blinked up at the ceiling as the whole world dissolved into darkness.


	60. The Doctor

The Doctor stayed calm at first. He walked silently through the hallways of the TARDIS, ignoring the screams and banging from behind locked doors. The almighty storm of noise from his companions was enough to unnerve the soldiers, one of them even muttering that maybe the sounds weren't coming from people at all. Maybe the ship was haunted.

Ghanje came flying out of his room howling with fury, his usually calm and soft blue light transformed to something burning white and moved like a bird of prey. One of the soldiers even opened fire on him, but the bullets flew harmlessly through the ball of energy until one of them stopped. It must have been excessively difficult for poor Ghanje to pull it off, but he managed to focus his energy enough to stop one bullet, turn it around, and send it right back. The soldier screamed as the bullet tore into his shoulder, and the others gave some panicked yells.

"Ghanje," the Doctor said quietly, calmly holding up his hand. "It's alright. Go back to bed. These gentlemen and I have an arrangement."

He stared into the light with unwavering eyes. Ghanje would not turn his back on these fools, too proud even in death to surrender, so the Doctor simply turned back around and began to walk again. The soldiers followed him, though some walked backwards now to keep an eye on the furious light that seemed to be pacing back and forth behind him like an agitated animal.

Mirrors rattled as they walked past and one of them even broke. The air filled with a hollow and barely audible scream that truly did sound like it came from some sort of phantom. The soldiers began automatically pointing their weapons at any mirror they approached, but it did nothing to ease their fears as the girl causing such a storm was nowhere to be seen behind the shaking glass.

"What kind of monsters do you keep in this place?" one of the soldiers asked with a clear tone of fear in his voice, though his eyes shone with relief as they entered the control room.

"The kind that come to love me," the Doctor answered calmly. "How else do you think I've kept the Master?"

"Well, you just make sure none of these things follow us or I'll go back and slit his throat in your bed."

The Doctor stopped walking and turned to gaze into the eyes of the coward who would dare to make such a threat. For a moment, the soldier just looked at him in confusion, though it quickly changed to realization right before the Doctor's head connected with his face.

He wasn't entirely sure what he did to the man because suddenly he was blind with rage and his body seemed to be acting of its own accord. Either he hadn't responded to the other soldiers' threats or they had been too afraid to issue any more after seeing what happened to their colleague. The next thing he knew, he could feel hands gripping his arms tightly and hauling him to his feet, leaving a bloodied man on the floor. His hands ached, his head hurt, and one of his elbows felt like it would bruise well. When they pulled the other soldier to his feet, the Doctor could tell by the soldier’s movements that he probably had a broken rib and he decided he might not mind the bruised elbow after all.

"Say something like that again," the Doctor hissed as the soldiers tried to collect themselves, a little surprised himself with what he'd done. "And you won't be getting up."

"Alright, Doctor, we know who you are," one of the soldiers responded, tapping him in the back with the barrel of his gun. "Now that fool knows it too. Let's keep moving."

They stepped out into the night and only had to wait a few moments for the teleport to take them. One last look at the TARDIS and all the Doctor could think about was how angry Harry was going to be in the morning. There would be hell to pay when they saw each other again.

He had to smirk when they taken aboard. There he was, just a man in a suit with no weapons who did not resist capture and yet the soldiers around were visibly shaken with two of them injured. He stood silently and waited as more men arrived to take care of the soldier he had been beaten and the one with a bullet in his shoulder. The new arrivals looked at him suspiciously and he just smirked back, the only evidence to show he had anything to do with it was the blood on his knuckles.

"Take him straight to the cells and put him in with His Royal Highness. Maybe he'll get the prat talking," a soldier ordered, nudging the Doctor towards another pair that stood awaiting orders. "And don't say anything to him. Apparently, he's a bit moody tonight."

"Well, you know, interrupted my beauty sleep," the Doctor answered with a smile and a wink.

As he was escorted through the ship to the holding cells, the Doctor was glad to see that anyone they passed appeared a bit nervous. Apparently, his stunt chasing Kahlia's ship and Harry's wonderful addition of screaming at her over the sound systems had done a decent job of scaring the pants off all her minions. Whatever delusions she had told these people about her power or certain victory over the Doctor and the TARDIS had been completely shattered—further reinforced by the fact that their new prisoner came back with his captors shaking in their boots.

He made sure to smile. He tried not to think about Harry lying alone in their bed or the fact that he might not be there when his child was born and forced himself to smile. Keep them on their toes, he thought, and keep them afraid.

The very first thing he noticed about the holding cells was that one of them had clearly been blown up. There was a completely empty cell with massive cracks in the walls, floor, and ceiling and scorch marks all around. A few scraps of metal had been embedded into the walls, too deep to have been pulled out and instead were simply left there.

"Someone lost their temper?" he asked, but the soldiers kept silent.

Harry was right. He glanced carefully into the cells he walked past and realized that each held only one person, and only five of them were occupied. On his left he passed a cell with a very thin looking young man in it, a mop of unruly brown hair and wide blue eyes, one of which was surrounded with a purple bruise. He wasn't sure if the young man was afraid of the Doctor himself or of the soldiers, but he was clearly afraid.

In the next he saw another young man, though he seemed a bit older than the first, maybe in his late twenties. He looked the Doctor right in the eye and paid no mind to the soldiers at all—clearly not afraid. He had a fair bit of muscle and looked healthy with no apparent injuries. Deep brown, perfectly calm eyes and black hair that was cut rather short with good posture—maybe military?

The third on the left was a woman with grey skin and lilac eyes. Tall and willowy, and clearly of Ferraxian decent, she was wearing robes from the Sevil Sisterhood. Her hair was shaved off, as was Sevil tradition, and he could only barely see the beginnings of it growing back so either the guards were allowing her to continue shaving her head or she hadn't been there very long. She watched him carefully, like a cat peering through the bushes. He didn't sense any fear in her either, only caution, and the only damage he could spot were scrapes on her palms, perhaps from being pushed to the floor.

On his right he saw another woman with far more muscle than the man in the other cell or the soldiers around him. Her long blonde hair was tied back with what looked like a strip of material torn from something else. Any skin he could see was riddled with old scars and new wounds, but the calloused state of her hands made him wonder how many had actually been inflicted by the soldiers rather than her own work. She gazed up at them with dark eyes momentarily before looking back towards the floor. Not afraid, but not confrontational either. As he passed, he got a quick glance at a mark that appeared to be branded onto one of her shoulders—the Haephsian Sun.

Finally, he laid eyes on the man he would be sharing a cell with. He looked to be about the same age as Shaun, maybe a little younger, with silver hair in a similar style to the Doctor’s own and the brightest blue eyes he'd ever seen. His porcelain skin didn't have a mark on it and the Doctor quickly noticed a few creature comforts in his cell that the others didn't have—extra bedding that appeared clean, a wash basin with soap and cloths, there were even a few pieces of fruit and books set on the small table in the corner.

The Doctor took notice of the way the man moved as the guards opened the cell door. He stood near the wall so as not to look like a threat and stayed quiet, but he did not shrink down, nor avoid looking at the guards. This man was just afraid enough to be careful.

"There's only one bed," the Doctor mentioned as he stepped through the doorway.

"There was only one bed where they found you," the soldier answered with a snort.

He didn't even need to say anything. He turned and looked the soldier in the eye with that stone-cold glare he had worked so hard to perfect over his nine hundred years. He wanted them well trained early that they were never to speak of Harry in front of him. The second soldier nudged the first one with the butt of his gun and muttered something quietly under his breath.

"Sorry, Sir," the soldier said quickly. "I didn't mean anything."

The Doctor smiled a little and reached for the barred door of the cell. "Of course you didn't," he answered calmly and pulled the door shut on his own. "Dismissed."

The two soldiers stood for a second, seeming surprised and unsure of what to do with themselves. They glanced at the guard, who made a quick motion for them to get lost, and they hurried off.

All he could think to do next was meet the people he was working to save. "Hi, I'm the Doctor," he said cheerfully, stretching out his arm for a handshake. "His Royal Highness, I presume?"

"Brody," the man answered, accepting his hand. " _Not_  His Royal Highness. They just call me that."

"Why would they call you that?"

"They're only keeping me for ransom, convinced that I'm the genuine Ginu'un Prince instead of one of the lookalikes."

"Why would you say you were a lookalike if you wanted to live? A lookalike is useless."

"That's what they said," Brody answered with a sly smile. "And here I am, alive."

"Before you get to talking and becoming best friends," piped up the woman in the cell next to their own. "Why don't you tell the man the rules so that he doesn't get himself killed?"

"He already knows," answered the grey woman across from them. "And he's much better at this game then we are."

"You know me?" he asked curiously.

"Heard of you, of course," the woman answered with a smile. "They call me Sevil, Doctor, and the first rule of survival here is to never tell them your real name. I'm sure you don't have a problem with that."

"Yeah, I think I'll be alright."

"The second rule is to avoid giving them any information they don't already have," Brody continued. "If you can keep them from knowing your species, do it."

"I'm a Time Lord, from Gallifrey," he answered simply. "They know that already. They know just about everything."

"Time Lords are a myth."

He turned around to see where the voice had come from and saw the man in the cell next to Sevil looking at him eagerly. "And who are you then?"

"Prowler," the man answered with a grin. "Since they caught me prowling on the ship for valuables to steal. And I've never heard of the Doctor, but I've heard of the Time Lords and they're just a story."

"Well, we're all just stories in the end."

"That's clever."

"No, I've heard of the Doctor too," spoke up the final man, peeking forward to the front of his cell. "Back home there were stories. You're a good man, Doctor. You save people. You're going to help us, right?"

The Doctor glanced from the thin man to the Prowler curiously. "Mouse," the Prowler said with a casual wave of his hand. "For obvious reasons."

"Mouse," the Doctor repeated the name in as kind a tone as he could. "I have every intention of going home, and I have every intention of making sure everyone else here does the same."

Mouse sighed so heavily and his muscles relaxed so visibly that the Doctor felt terribly bad for him. "Thank God," the little man whimpered. "We might actually get out of here alive."

"No Doctor is getting us out," said the voice of the woman in the cell beside theirs. "I've told you lot, the only one who can save us is the Star."

"The Star is a myth," the Prowler replied with an annoyed huff, turning in circles in his cell now.

"You just said Time Lords were a myth!"

"They are!"

"Prowler, there's a Time Lord  _right there_ ," Mouse pointed out.

"Well . . . all myths are based in  _some_  truth."

"The most we can do is stay alive until the Star comes," the woman said bitterly. "Until then, we follow the three rules and keep quiet."

"That's the Mechanic," Brody muttered quietly. "She was working as a craftsman when Godforge was sacked and they keep her for her skill, to fix things or give information on weapon design. She's usually lovely but today just isn't one of her better days."

"Not one of my better days either, really," the Doctor answered, gazing at the wall that hid the Mechanic from his sight. "She said three rules?"

"The third rule is to know everything they know about you, and not lie about any of it. So, for example, don't bother trying to tell them you're not married because you're wearing a ring, but don't take the ring off because they've already seen it. You don't want to admit to anything they don't already know, though."

"Are you married, Doctor?" the Prowler asked, leaning against the bars of his cell so that his nose reached out between them.

"Yes," the Doctor answered, looking down at his ring rather self consciously.

"You got kids?"

"No."

"Good man!” the Prowler answered with a grin. “Brody, you ever been in the Ginu'un Palace?"

"Yup," Brody answered, turning towards the bed to putter with the pillows.

"What's it like sleeping in a Palace bed?"

"Wouldn't know. Never slept on them."

"See how it works?"

The Doctor watched Brody carefully as he turned the bed down and fluffed pillows, then back at the Prowler who stood there looking a little too cheerful. Out of the five of his new companions, these two seemed far more relaxed than the others.

"Why aren't you two afraid?" he asked curiously.

"They can't touch us," Brody answered simply, then held up his hand to show the Doctor how he could charge it up and make it arc with electricity. "Any time they come too near I just shock them, and I use it to ruin any machines they send in to try and take my blood. They can't get a DNA test on me. Same thing goes for the Prowler, but he's got some sort of shield around him. They can't figure out how it's being generated or how to stop it. You don't even know he has it until someone tries to pass it and not a single cell of any person gets through."

The Doctor glanced over at the Prowler who simply winked at him.

"I heard the guards talking about you," Brody continued quietly. "I had no idea who you were until Sevil and Mouse told me. The only Time Lord I knew of called himself the Master and he conquered my people like it was the easiest thing in the universe. His power has inspired many legends on my world but Sevil says you defeated even him."

"Well . . . in a manner of speaking."

"We've known that you were coming here for a long time, and really we've just been waiting. The Mechanic has her Star and the Prowler doesn't really believe in any saviours, but Mouse, Sevil, and myself have all been waiting for you.  _You_  are our best chance to escape."

"Right . . ." the Doctor smiled a little awkwardly. "No pressure then."

"I'll sleep on the floor," Brody offered quickly. "You can have the bed to yourself. I don't mind."

"Nah, don't be silly," he answered with a warm smile, dropping himself onto the bed and suddenly realizing how tired he still was. "That floor is solid stone. We can share. I don't bite. And actually, if you don't mind, I was sort of dragged out of my bed back home so . . ."

"Oh, yes, of course."

He sat on the edge of the bed and removed his shoes, jacket, and tie, watching the others out of the corner of his eye carefully. It seemed that everyone had been given names that suited them well. Mouse stayed curled up on his bed, as far into the corner as he could, fidgeting and picking at his nails. The Prowler had a tendency to pace in his cell or else stop and watch him the exact same way the Doctor was watching them, like some sort of predatory animal that was quickly becoming bored. And Sevil sat on her knees on the floor, reciting prayers from the Sevil Sisterhood with her face turned upward to the ceiling. He couldn't really see what the Mechanic was doing and she didn't seem to be saying much, but he supposed he would get to know her later.

There was something about this group that felt a little off—like he had missed something, but he had no idea what. And as he settled down into Brody's bed and felt sleep creeping up on him, his eyes drifted from one of his fellow prisoners to the next. With half-closed eyes he saw Brody and Sevil exchange a meaningful look and felt the Prowler's gaze upon him.

There was something he was forgetting. Something right in front of him.


	61. Wilfred

After an awful lot of shouting, several gunshots, and a long silence that followed, the cloister bell in the TARDIS finally stopped ringing. The bedroom doors that refused to budge suddenly opened and everyone poured out into the hallway in a panic.

It didn't take Wilfred even a second to realize that neither of the Time Lords were with them and tore into the Doctor's room. When he found Harry, for one terrible moment, he thought he was dead. He didn't wake up when Wilfred shook him or shouted at him, and his breath was so shallow that it seemed like he wasn't breathing at all.

Jack and Shaun took off to search the TARDIS for any sign of the Doctor, while Donna sat with Wilfred and desperately tried to find out what was wrong with Harry. They found the syringe on the night stand rather quickly, but neither of them knew what had been in it. It could have just been a sedative, or it could have been some kind of poison. How could they know?

Wilfred could hear Jack's angered cries echoing through the otherwise silent TARDIS and it made him feel rather ill. Shaun's voice came over the sound system, begging the Doctor to make himself known. Donna got flustered as it became apparent very quickly that there was nothing they could do.

"We found blood," Shaun announced, appearing in the doorway. "It starts in the hall and trails quite far. Jack found a puddle and some splatter in the control room as well."

"Did they teach you how to use the DNA readers?" Donna just about screamed at him.

"I'm already on it," Shaun answered, then vanished again.

"What's wrong with him, Gramps?" Donna asked, her voice cracking as she neared tears. "Is he dying? What about the baby? Is the baby alright?"

Wilfred looked around the room that he had so recently helped to clean and organize and hoped that the Doctor wasn't as messy as Harry claimed he was. He hurried about, looking through the cupboards and drawers, digging through all sorts of tools and mementos until he found one of the dozen stethoscopes he knew were tucked away in that room.

"Look out, love," he muttered, gently moving Donna's hands away from Harry.

He wasn't really sure what a Time Lord's heartbeat was supposed to sound like, trying his best to remember what he had heard when connected to the baby's mind, but at least the stethoscope confirmed that both of them were beating. They were beating rather slowly, but they sounded strong and consistent. That was a good sign, wasn't it?

"Is he dying?" Donna asked again.

"I don't think so," he answered quickly before moving the stethoscope to the denndi.

He couldn't find a heartbeat, not even one. He just heard the muffled noise of Harry's hearts beating in the background. He tried to keep his face calm, but the moment he started repositioning the stethoscope, Donna knew what he was looking for.

"You can't find it?"

"I don't really know where to look!"

"It's a  _heartbeat_ , Columbus, it's not like it moved! It's there, it's got to be there!"

It took what felt like an hour to find the tiny  _pitter-patter_  sound, though it had probably only been an excruciatingly long minute. He just about cried in relief when he found it, and Donna did. Shaun came back a few minutes later to tell them that, if he done it right (which he wasn't sure he had), the blood they'd found did not belong to the Doctor.

The three of them sat together around Harry's bed, silent for the most part. Sometimes they'd try to figure out what happened or ponder over whether the Doctor was alright. Wilfred got up every half hour or so to check that all hearts in question were still beating steadily, and Donna seemed to feel better if she sat next to Harry and held a cloth on his forehead. Shaun kept them readily supplied with tea, though no one seemed bothered to drink it, and Jack continued tearing through the ship in search of the Doctor.

When Harry finally opened his eyes, the first thing out of Donna's mouth was to tell him that the baby was fine. Wilfred began asking him questions about how he felt or whether he needed anything, but it became obvious quickly that Harry couldn't answer them. Those brown eyes gazed upward, full of emotion, but his lips would not move. Nothing would move. Donna picked up Harry's hand and dropped it as a test, and it fell back to the mattress as though it weren't attached to anyone alive.

"Can you talk to me in here?" Wilfred asked, tapping his fingers against his own forehead, but nothing happened.

They sat with him anxiously and waited for any further change. Slowly, Harry’s fingers began to move, then his feet fidgeted, his elbows bent. He was able to open his mouth and groan a little after forty minutes, but it was a full hour before he could form any words.

Harry sat up carefully in the bed, with a little help from Shaun. His hand automatically came up to rest on the denndi and his eyes fixed on some spot across the room, his slow and laboured breathing steadily normalizing.

"Someone call Jack back," Harry said quietly, his voice hoarse. "The Doctor's gone."

"What do you mean by gone?" Donna reached her hand out towards Harry, then suddenly changed her mind and pulled it back. "He's not . . . you don't mean that he's—"

"I don't think so," Harry answered, his hand still over the denndi as he took a deep breath. "That bastard just let them take him. Oh, he just  _loves_  trying to get himself killed. Never mind me or his own bloody child—he's got to worry about saving a bunch of total strangers!"

Wilfred couldn't help stepping forward and taking hold of Harry's arm to help him when he tried to stand up, even though Shaun was holding onto him quite firmly already. Harry's whole body swayed and his knees buckled once or twice before he gave up and Shaun helped him to sit back down again.

"That son of a bitch drugged me!" Harry barked angrily. "He just sat there and said he was sorry like  _that_  makes everything better! I'm going to kill him! He's got no idea—"

"Harry, why don't I just go find a wheelchair?" Shaun offered.

"I don't want a wheelchair!" Harry shouted again. "I want my legs to work so that I can track down that fucking idiot and strangle him with my bare hands!"

Wilfred glanced at Shaun and Donna's faces, both looking extremely uncomfortable. "Harry . . ."

Harry met Wilf's eyes and then quickly looked back down. "Sorry," he said, though there was still a hint of anger in his voice. "I'm sorry, everyone. It's not you lot, it's just—"

"We know," Donna interrupted kindly, and placed her hand on Harry's shoulder to give an encouraging squeeze. "I hit him a few times for doing the same thing when it was just the two of us. Stupid man, always running off."

"Stupid or brilliant, sometimes I'm not sure which. I'm sure we could have worked out a way to save the hostages without letting him get captured." Harry sighed heavily and glanced around the room. "I need Jack. Someone get Jack."

"Right," Shaun said and moved to walk away, but Harry grabbed him firmly by the shirt.

"Not you," he said, pulling Shaun back. "I need you here. Talk to the baby."

"I—what?"

Harry rolled his eyes and looked up at Shaun as though he were too stupid for words. "The baby is telepathically linked with me, he knows something's wrong, and he's panicking. Usually, the Doctor would talk to him and he calms down. The Doctor's not here right now and he likes you, so talk."

"He likes  _me_?"

"You mean he  _doesn't_  like  _me_?" Donna asked in a loud voice, sounding highly offended.

"Maybe, if you didn't get all shrill like that, he would," Harry answered irritably. "Now if everyone could focus for a minute, we kind of have a serious situation to deal with. Shaun, talk to the baby so that I can bloody well think. And would  _somebody_  go get Jack!?"

Wilfred hopped to his feet and scurried from the room just as Shaun sat down next to Harry and began rather awkwardly with "Er . . . hello there".

He bustled about the TARDIS looking for Jack for several minutes before Wilf thought of the obvious and went to the control room. There was blood on the floor and quite a bit of it, splattered out in all directions. He knew that Shaun said it wasn't the Doctor's blood, but did he really know how to use those machines properly?

"I'm already doing it," Jack's voice filled the silent air as Wilfred skirted around the puddle of blood.

"Sorry," Wilf said, leaning in close to watch what the other man's movements. "Doing what?"

"What Harry sent you to tell me to do," he answered simply, punching in buttons and staring up at the screen above his head. "Following the command history to see how the Doctor tracked the Nightmare's ship and checking the status of the TARDIS to see what's changed since last night."

"Ah . . . that's what he wants, is it?"

"That's what the smartest first steps would be."

"Right-o then," he answered, feeling a bit nervous at the look of intensity in Jack's eyes, and gestured towards the blood on the floor. "What do you think happened there then?"

Jack smirked, pushing the screen towards Wilfred, and punched in a few buttons. "Have a look for yourself."

It was a terrible sight to see—the Doctor marching so solemnly with so many soldiers pointing guns at him. He noticed one of the soldiers moving a bit awkwardly with his gun hanging at his side and remembered the blood they'd found in the hallway. The screen crackled a bit, but it stabilized just in time for Wilfred to hear one of the soldiers muttering.

" _. . . or I'll go back and slit his throat in your bed."_

The cracking sound that echoed out of the speakers when the Doctor's skull collided with the soldier's face made him cringe, then he jumped in surprise when the Doctor simply launched himself on the man. All this time, despite the Doctor's regular assurances that he was nothing of the sort, Wilfred always considered him to be one of those men that would never hurt a fly. He watched in shock as it only took the Doctor a few short seconds to give the man the brutal beating that left behind such a mess on the floor.

"My word!"

"The Oncoming Storm," Jack said proudly, leaning in close to a small screen on the console itself. "And more than that, a  _genius_ ," he hurried around to a different part of the console and picked up the microphone there. "Harry! Come in, Master Mott, do you read?"

Wilfred glanced at Jack suspiciously, wondering why he had suddenly become so cheerful looking. He glanced at the screen Jack had been looking at but it all looked like a bunch of fancy gibberish and numbers.

"Look here," Jack said excitedly, pointing to the video playing as the now wounded soldier was helped to his feet. "Look right here!"

Wilfred looked carefully. "I don't see anything."

Jack opened his mouth to answer but the speakers crackled to life and Harry's voice spoke. "What is it? Did you find something?"

"First of all, you should know that your baby-daddy let one of those soldiers become very well acquainted with his fists before they left."

" _Don't_  call him that, Jack."

"Call him what?"

"You know what."

"You want to know what I found or not?"

There was a short pause before Harry audibly sighed. "Just tell me."

"Well, I've been looking at the computer for any changes since last night," Jack began with a grin. "And then I noticed something a little odd in the video footage. I saw a shadow, Harry . . . a shadow with no one to cast it."

" . . .  _What_?"

Wilfred leaned up closer to the screen where Jack had paused the video footage and finally saw the black shape that he had been trying to point out. There was definitely something there.

"Looks like they've got a few billion more house guests than they planned for," Jack said with a wide grin. "Boris has left the building."


	62. Boris

The ship was full of whispers—whispers of a mad man on the ship with no fear and of one who was much worse that was surely on his way. Some said that the Doctor had come for a Ginu'un prince and that they should just release them both and hope that he didn't come back. Some said that the Doctor was the Star that they fought on Godforge and that they should either kill him or run. Some laughed and said that the Doctor had been taken prisoner and should not be feared, while others insisted that he was only a prisoner because he wanted to be.

They called him the Oncoming Storm, and Boris knew that the Doctor would be pleased.

He drifted through the ship, keeping the swarm scattered enough to remain invisible, or else kept to the shadows. The Doctor had been very clear that he was not to be seen under any circumstances and, after his last meeting with the Nightmare, he had to agree. He explored the ship, taking care to remember every twist and turn, and paid attention to the movement and timing of the guards.

"Any and all information is useful," the Doctor had told him as he darted from one bedroom to the next with his sonic screwdriver, sealing them all. "I don't want things going wrong because we get lost or because something surprises us. Pay attention to  _everything_."

Boris decided it would be best to stay by the cell block the first time they took the Doctor away, to see what the other prisoners thought. It was entertaining to watch the way the Doctor kept the soldiers intimidated, despite the fact that he had no weapons. They sent six men to take him from his cell and they were still too nervous to touch him, instead staying back a few feet and keeping their guns trained on him.

The Doctor knew why they were there and what was to come, but he didn't let it show. He adjusted his tie and collar, making them wait, before stepping through the open cell door and strolling along as though the soldiers were his own personal bodyguards instead of his captors.

Three hundred years Boris had spent with the Doctor, and he knew that the man could withstand torture. Whatever they did to him, he would come out with his head held high. Boris sent a few members of the swarm to touch the Doctor's cheek, letting him know that he was still there, and the Doctor smirked.

It turned out that they didn't take him far. The room he disappeared into was just a short walk down the hallway, close enough that they might be able to hear him scream. They wanted the prisoners to lose faith in the Doctor it seemed.

"Do you think he's a spy?" the Mechanic asked the moment the door closed behind them. "Why's he so bloody comfortable? And why are they keeping him in with Brody? They never put us together. I reckon he's an imposter sent to gain our trust."

Boris crept along the shadows, getting a good look into each cell. The Mechanic meant what she said—her eyes full of suspicion.

"They don't play that sort of game here," the Prowler added. "That wouldn't be enough fun for our little Queen. She wants to break us, not trick us."

"I think they put him in with me in the hopes he would get me talking," Brody answered sensibly, leaning against the wall of his cell with his arms crossed. "But he hasn't really been asking questions, has he?"

"He doesn't have to if he can get your blood," Mouse pointed out, creeping forward to push his face through the bars of his cell.

"Not you too," the Prowler said with a shake of his head.

"Well, she's got a point!" Mouse protested. "How do we know? Time Lords can change their faces, so anyone could just walk in here and claim to be the Doctor. Brody can't keep an energy field up 24/7 and they're sharing a cell. All he has to do is wait for you to fall asleep and he can take your blood. If you're not the prince, that's as good as a death sentence! You saw what they did to Merrin!"

A dull thump echoed through the air and everyone's eyes turned towards the closed door down the hall. There was a short pause, then another thump and a muffled yell. In the silence they could hear just traces of the scuffle and all the prisoner's faces grew sombre.

"I've seen into his mind," Sevil said calmly. "I saw no deception there."

"Anyone can tell just by looking at you that you're a Ferrax," the Mechanic insisted. "He'll know that you can do that, and he'll have guarded his secrets in his mind too."

"They're hurting him in there," the Prowler added, pacing in his cell again, his eyes fixed in the direction of the room. "Just like the rest of us."

"That can be faked," the Mechanic said dismissively. "Or just a part of the plan. It doesn't really matter. People are willing to suffer all sorts of things for a cause. Our best course of action is to keep our heads down and wait for the Star."

"That is not a course of action!" the Prowler yelled, kicking his foot against the wall and making Mouse nearly jump out of his skin. "Sitting and waiting to be rescued is  _not_  an option! Your Star doesn't exist and, if he did, he wouldn't be sticking his neck out for people who aren't willing to do a damn thing on their own! The deities of Godforge reward hard work, not sitting quietly and waiting for everything to be done for you, so if you mention that fucking Star  _one_  more time—"

"Prowler!" Brody shouted.

The Prowler stopped talking, paced back and forth in his cell a few times while chewing on his thumb. "Sorry," he said finally with a bit of a huff. "But it's fine for her to say that because she  _can_  sit and wait. If they found out who she is, it doesn't matter, because they're keeping her to work. The rest of us are mainly here for curiosity and  _eventually_  they'll get the information they want. Sitting and waiting is going to get us all killed or worse. Think about it."

"Don't tell us to think," Mouse argued, though he didn't go any nearer to the wall that separated him from the Prowler. "You came onto this ship willingly. How stupid is that?"

"So did Sevil."

"Sevil came here to rescue people," the Mechanic spat back. "You came here as a thief."

"Everyone just stop it! The Prowler's right," Sevil interrupted. "I'm only still here because the Nightmare wants to know how I got on the ship and who sent me. Once she finds those things out, and she  _will_ , I'll be executed. All that's protecting Brody is an identity. Once she knows why Mouse is immune to her telepathy or how the Prowler is shielding himself, they're dead too. The rest of us can't afford to wait for some saviour, especially if we may have already been given one."

"Right, so we can wind up like the Officer?" the Mechanic said spitefully.

"Better that than to wind up like Merrin!" the Prowler barked again. "She died on her knees begging for her life! At least the Officer died fighting, on his feet, with blood on his hands. If I'm going to die here, then I want to go like that. You can sit and wait for your Star all you want, but I'm following the Doctor."

A heavy silence followed and Boris slipped along the shadows and into the Prowler's cell. He could see movement on the floor, like dust billowing in a wind, following his movements as he paced. There was no visible force to cause it and no being much larger than a particle would be able to see it with the naked eye, but the swarm's many eyes could see it perfectly. The floor of the Prowler's cage was like a desert, layered with skin cells and dried and shriveled blood cells and platelets, tiny bristles of his short hair, and eyelashes. The whole sea of it waved back and forth as the Prowler moved, as if it were being swept about by some invisible broom.

The shield was absolute. Not a single cell, living or dead, was able to get beyond three feet of him . . . except for the swarm. Boris sat in the Prowler's shadow and quickly realized that, even with a machine, the Nightmare would not be able to get any sort of samples from the Prowler because not even his own tissue could pass through the barrier.

He supposed the Prowler had to eat, and really anything edible was, at some point, a living thing. However the barrier worked, it had limits and was not calibrated to limit Boris himself. A perfect hiding place, he decided. He could hide in the Prowler's shadow and no one else would be able to touch him.

"Check if he has two hearts," Mouse said suddenly. "Time Lords have two hearts."

"Lots of species have two hearts," Brody pointed out.

"Then check his back," Sevil added. "Check if he has two hearts and then look at his back. Time Lords have an organ along their lower spine. Most people don't know that and, if he is an imposter, they might not have thought of it."

It grew quiet again after that—no sound except for that of Mouse chewing at his fingernails and the occasional footsteps when the Prowler couldn't sit still any longer and would get up to pace around his cell a few times. Then of course, there was the sounds coming from down the hallway. It seemed that everyone was trying hard to ignore it, even Boris, but the noise was persistent. A few times it stopped for a while and Boris hoped that meant it was over, but then it would start again.

"I'm getting the hell out of here," Mouse whispered after they had listened for what seemed like forever. "I'm with the rest of you. I'm not dying like Merrin. I'm not."

"Of course not, Mouse," Brody answered warmly. "We won't let you."

When the Doctor finally returned, Boris wasn't sure how he was walking. He held his head high, just as Boris thought he would, though blood trickled down his face, dripping off his chin and trailing down his neck. It was hard to see beyond the red, but he was sure, from the swelling that underneath it all, both his eyes were probably bruised.

His clothes had been removed, emerging with only a robe draped around his shoulders and tied loosely at the waist. He walked with a visible limp, but he did not stumble. Their footsteps seemed to echo unbearably loud in the silence—the only other sounds were the frightened whimpers emerging from Mouse's cell and the gentle patter of blood dripping on the floor.

The Prowler moved to the front of his cell, causing the soldiers to take a step away from it. His brows had locked together and, though Boris didn't want to move to see properly, he could swear the man was baring his teeth at them. Brody stood up tall and squared his shoulders, moving to the front of his cell as well.

Boris noticed that six soldiers had become five, they still seemed reluctant to touch the Doctor, and now they seemed to be getting a little nervous in response to Brody and the Prowler's reactions. One soldier opened the door to Sevil's cell, a second placed a bowl of water with a cloth and some bandages on the floor beside the door, then a third put down the pile of the Doctor's neatly folded clothes.

"Clean him up," one of the soldiers ordered, and the Doctor took that as his cue to enter the cell.

"Why did you remove his clothes?" Brody asked in a strong voice that commanded respect. "What have you done to him?"

"He said he didn't want to get his suit dirty," the leading soldier answered simply and pulled the bar door shut.

Sevil was clever enough to know that the Doctor wanted to wait for the soldiers to leave. The second they were gone however, she took hold of his hand and the Doctor all too willingly allowed himself to be pulled down onto the bed.

Boris slipped into the cell and, as Sevil used water to wash away the blood, he crept into the wounds to clear away anything that may have gotten inside. It seemed that most of the blood had come from a deep gash in his forehead. The rest of the damage to his body appeared to be from brute force—the skin swollen and flaming red, likely to be purple and black within an hour or two.

"Those animals," Brody said, his voice rich with disgust as he shook his head.

"They'll give you a few days rest before they take you again," Sevil assured the Doctor, warmly stroking his cheek with one hand as the other wiped the blood away from his neck. "They always give us some time to heal."

The Doctor muttered some words of thanks and apologized for her trouble. With a little encouragement from Sevil, he closed his eyes to rest and let her take care of him. Boris watched the way she carefully laid her hands flat against his chest, feeling for two heartbeats, then turned her face to nod at Brody.

The red washed away to reveal purple underneath and there were many times that the Doctor would flinch or gasp at her touch. She carefully placed a bandage over the wound on his head and to another that she found on his shoulder, before asking him to turn over. The Doctor did well not to complain, but it was easy to know just from the way he breathed that turning onto his side was painful on his bruised ribs.

Sevil helped to gently slide the robe down his arm to expose the flesh. Other than bruises, there were only scrapes and scratches to be found on his back, as though he'd been dragged across the floor or perhaps pushed against a wall. Sevil washed away the smears of dirt and the small amount of blood to be found there, careful to brush the cloth over the pink skin of the Doctor's shevra.

The Doctor flinched at the touch to the sensitive skin, though he didn't say anything. Sevil continued her work as though nothing happened, often using one hand to rest gently upon or caress him in some way while the other cleaned him so delicately—the touch of a mother or, at the very least, a caregiver.

Finally, Sevil turned her head towards Brody again and nodded slowly. The silver-haired man sighed in relief and turned away so that his back rested against the bars of his cell, allowing the Doctor his privacy as Sevil finished.

"The Doctor is one of us now," Brody said quietly, though clearly enough for everyone to hear. "And we stay together. All of us."


	63. The Doctor

The Doctor had never been so grateful to chance than he was to have a Ferrax as one of his fellow prisoners. Though the Ferraxian gifts were nothing compared to actual medicine, it was more than he could have hoped for. Just a touch and Sevil could pass on all sorts of endorphins and energy to promote healing and ease his pain. He laid on her bed for nearly an hour while she washed and soothed him, and not another word was passed between the prisoners.

He lifted his head once, to glance at the two cells across from Sevil's, and was surprised to see both Brody and Mechanic staring with nervous eyes into the Prowler's cell. The solid wall that separated him from the Prowler's cell stopped the Doctor from being able to see what the others were seeing so, instead, he focused his mind and tried to get a feel for any psychic waves emanating through the wall. The feeling was heavy and full of rage, like the black clouds of a monstrous storm in the distance, and he understood why Brody and the Mechanic would be frightened by the look in the eyes of a man who felt like that.

The Doctor felt something warm reaching back into his mind, telling him to rest, and remembered that Sevil would be aware of even that which he was doing in his mind. He felt that he could trust her, but he would still have to be careful. No matter who it was, he never felt entirely safe knowing they could see his thoughts. He let his mind give her a gentle push to usher her out and obediently kept his thoughts to himself.

At some point a pair of guards arrived and dragged Mouse out of his cell. They were rather rough with him, but it seemed that, for today at least, he was to be spared from the usual battery. He was told to clean the blood off the floors from the Doctor's march back to his cell, and Mouse obeyed without protest.

It became apparent very quickly that the guards took delight in how fearful Mouse was, and regularly tried to frighten him. On occasion, one of them would raise their gun as though they were about to hit him with the butt of it, just to hear him whimper or watch him try to hide his face behind his arms. It was then that the Doctor realized Mouse was probably the only one that they could really toy with.

They were unable to physically touch both Brody or the Prowler and had been likely told not to hurt Brody anyway, just in case he really was royalty. They couldn't hurt the Mechanic much either if they wanted her to be able to work and, though he was sure they had no qualms about hurting Sevil, he couldn't imagine her reacting in a way that satisfied them quite as much as Mouse. The poor boy was a punching bag, it seemed, and that explained why the others were so protective over him.

They stayed quiet until one of the guards struck Mouse for the first time, kicking him in the thigh while he scrubbed away. Immediately there was an uproar of noise as the others shouted for them to stop. The guard smirked and kicked Mouse again. Without a second's hesitation, there was a loud clattering of bars and the guard looked to be hit by an invisible wrecking ball, launching him against the bars of Brody's cell. Brody quickly pounced, reaching him arms through the bars with electricity visibly dancing between his fingers, pausing with his hand just above the guard's throat.

"What did we say?" Brody asked calmly. "Leave him alone."

The other guard pointed his gun at Brody's head and threatened to shoot, but the Ginu'un didn't even flinch. "Oh, I do dare you," Brody said, turning his gaze up to the other guard. "Because then you'd have to explain to the Nightmare why she's suddenly at war with the entire Ginu'un Royal Fleet, and I'm sure we both know how that would work out." He looked back at the guard trapped beneath his hand and smiled at him. "Now how about you just let the boy finish washing the floor?"

The guards made all sorts of threats and muttered plenty of abuse once Brody backed off, though they didn't hit Mouse again. It took the Doctor a few seconds to figure out what exactly had happened because whatever the Prowler had done had happened quickly and was hidden behind the cell wall. But he noticed the way the guards avoided going near the Prowler’s cell and realized that the he had launched himself against the bars of his door, hitting the guard with the force of whatever was shielding him and sending him straight to Brody. Brody had been so quick to act that the Doctor wondered if the two of them had done it before.

He still felt that nagging feeling that he had missed something, and he wondered if maybe that was it—Brody and the Prowler working so smoothly.

After Mouse had finished cleaning the floor, he was put back in his cell without injury and the Doctor waited for the guards to leave before speaking. He set to work dressing himself in his clean suit and began asking questions. He assured them, after the Mechanic gave him a wary look, that he didn't want any secrets, just the same information that everybody else had.

Brody didn't have much to say that the Doctor didn't already know. He was travelling privately when his ship was attacked by some of the Nightmare's pirates. All seven members of his crew were executed, and his own life was only spared because the attackers couldn't tell if he was the true prince or one of the many decoys. The Nightmare did not want to go to the royal family for negotiations until she knew if it was really worth it—no point in making enemies where she didn't need them. Brody was the name of one of the crew members and it was name the first thing he thought to say when asked. He'd also been there longer than anyone else.

Mouse had been the second arrival. He caught a ride with a supply ship from Earth to the Orion Satellite, hoping to start an apprenticeship of some kind there. The ship was hijacked and forced to dock on the Nightmare's ship. He said that, when the Nightmare tried to play games with his head, the same way that she toyed with most of her victims, nothing happened. Simple curiosity was the only reason that he was still there.

Then came the Mechanic, who told him about the sacking of Godforge. The Nightmare held her presence there for months and, during that time, the prophecy of the Star ran rampant through the colony. Acolytes of the Temple had been sent to aid the Star in his escape from Earth, as had been foretold, but never returned. She had been taken prisoner by the time the Star actually arrived, but she caught a glimpse of him when they stormed the ship and knew immediately that he must have been a god. The armour he wore could not hold back his holy light, causing it to shimmer like the Temple itself.

"The man didn't ask for a sermon," the Prowler said with a snort.

The Mechanic shot him a dirty look before continuing. The only reason she was kept was because of her skill set and extensive knowledge on how to maintain and repair ships, as well as a talent for weapon design. In the beginning, she refused to co-operate in any form, but the Nightmare found a way. Another woman named Merrin was being held prisoner at the time and had been completely compliant and given all the information they asked for. The Nightmare saw no point in keeping her, so the guards dragged Merrin out of her cell and demanded once again that the Mechanic co-operate. When she said no again, they told Merrin to beg the Mechanic, then shot her in the head. The Mechanic fulfilled every work assignment given to her after that.

The Prowler arrived shortly afterwards. He'd been caught by guard who found him sneaking around the armoury. He'd been prepared to hide by making sure he had his mysterious shield that, not only prevented anyone from grabbing him, but kept him either hidden or scrambled under the scrutiny of any sort of scanner. He didn't put up a fight, mainly because the guards had guns and he didn't, and figured he would find a way to escape like he always did. The Nightmare wanted to know how his shield worked but keeping that a mystery along with how he got on board were what kept him alive. He also refused to say what he came to steal because he claimed that he was still determined to get it once he broke free, and he didn't want to run the risk of it being moved to another ship.

Finally, Sevil had only been on the ship just short of two weeks. She'd come on board knowing that innocent people were being held captive, tortured, and killed. She came on a rescue mission, but the absence of any other Sevil Sisters caused the Nightmare to doubt that it was a mission arranged by the Sisterhood itself. She wanted to know if Sevil was working for anyone and, if so, who. It apparently also drove the Nightmare crazy trying to figure out how Sevil got on the ship without anyone knowing, especially when the Prowler had done the same thing.

Mouse then told him that they established the three rules of survival after what happened to Merrin, deciding that secrecy was the best defense. He also explained that they had all been rather hesitant to attempt an escape after another prisoner, whom they knew only as the Officer, died after escaping from his cell. They said the poor man didn't even make it to the end of the hall before he was gunned down.

"Of course they want to learn our secrets," Brody added after Mouse had finished talking. "But they haven't really given us their full attention as they've been so distracted with the plots surrounding you. I've been hearing the guards talking about plans to capture the Doctor since I came here. Not only that, I've heard them talk about the Master too, though that can't be possible, can it? All the stories say he died."

All the Doctor could do was shrug his shoulders and scratch his head a bit awkwardly. "That's never stopped him before," he answered and leaned his back against the wall connecting the next cell.

"Yes . . . that is what the legends say."

"Oh, I am sick of the lot of you," the Prowler grumbled, and the Doctor could hear the footsteps as he paced around his cell. "First we've got the Mechanic going on about some Star and now I have to listen to this rubbish about Time Lords—"

"I  _am_  a Time Lord."

"Look, I don't care what you are. I just want everyone to stop talking about all these people like they're magical or something. I'm sure the Star is just some bloke who put on a suit of armour and that the Master is just really lucky and, forgive me, Doctor, but I'm sure you're just a clever man."

"I never said I was anything different," the Doctor pointed out.

"No, but you certainly don't say much to try and straighten out the stories, do you?"

"Would you stop being so horrible?" the Mechanic whined.

"I'm not horrible. I'm realistic," the Prowler just about growled at her and the Doctor noticed Brody lean forward on his bed to catch the Prowler's eye. "It doesn't do anyone any favours to think of someone as invincible. They stop helping themselves in expectation that some magical being is going to fix the world for them."

He couldn't help himself. He just couldn't. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you sound bitter."

There was a short pause. "Sevil, where are you right now?" the Prowler asked quietly.

"By the far wall," Sevil answered. "Why?"

He might not have known the Prowler very well, but he should have known him well enough to know he needed to move away from the wall. Something strong and solid hit him in the back, sending him stumbling forward and shooting pain across his bruised and scraped back. The Prowler used his shield as a weapon once again.

"Oi!" the Doctor barked, turning around to glare at the wall standing between them. "Watch yourself, boy!"

"Or what, old man!?" the Prowler barked back. "You're gonna rattle off some egotistical nonsense to convince me you're  _so_  impressive until you get the living hell beaten out of you again?"

"Enough!" Brody snapped, though the Doctor noticed that those blue eyes were not fixed on himself. "Prowler, mind you temper. And for God's sake, Doctor, don't provoke him. We don't need fighting amongst ourselves and we certainly don't need any words being spoken before they're thought through. Not in this place."

He could hear the Prowler's feet pacing—back and forth, like an irritated cat. "All I'm saying is, I don't play myself up to be some god and they never got  _my_  clothes off."

"I said  _enough_."

The group was quiet for the rest of the day aside from the occasional comment. Brody tried to spread the special treatment he received as much as he could, tossing books and bits of food through the bars of his cell across to them whenever the guards weren't around, then they could be passed over to the next cell with a long enough arm and a clever bit of twisting.

Several times, the Doctor saw Brody looking through the bars of his cell into the Prowler's or making eye contact with Sevil. His mind still nagged at him sometimes that there was something important he wasn't seeing, and he was beginning to think that was it. Some kind of alliance between those three? The Prowler, despite some obvious issues he seemed to be dealing with, was definitely intelligent, as were Brody and Sevil. He supposed it made sense that the three of them would naturally be drawn to each other, especially when Brody seemed to have a knack for controlling or calming down the Prowler.

He didn't hear any words drift through the separating wall again until it was well into the night. The Doctor did not feel remotely tired yet, so he sat on the floor with his back to the wall while Sevil slept in the bed, fiddling with his wedding ring and wondering what Harry was doing back on the TARDIS.

How angry was he? Was he planning to let the Doctor save the prisoners before he decided to do something stupid like attack the ship? Were they aware that Boris was gone as well? Was the baby alright? Were the others enough to take care of him? Was he too lonely sleeping in that big bed all by himself? Was he sleeping at all?

"Doctor?" the Prowler's voice whispered through the darkness.

He was a little surprised to know that the Prowler was awake in what had seemed like a perfect silence. "Yes?"

"I'm sorry."

He felt his mouth twitch at the corner into a faint smile. "Ah, it was my fault really. I tried to get a reaction out of you and I got it."

"Well . . . still."

The next day the soldiers came for Sevil. They insisted on gripping her forearms as they walked away, though Sevil did not flinch or show any signs of fear. The Doctor could clearly hear that Mouse was nearly hyperventilating as they watched, but Sevil walked towards her tortures with perfect solemnity.

He waited for the remaining soldiers to close the cell, but they didn't. Instead the soldier gestured for the Doctor to leave the cell as well and he wondered, admittedly a little fearful, if they had decided to forego the days of healing. He made sure to stand tall and not to let his eyes turn away, his suit impeccably clean and his face doing its best to look strong despite its bruising.

He stepped out through the door and saw the way both Brody's and the Mechanic's eyes widened with worry. He turned toward the direction where Sevil was being led and could see the Prowler in the corner of his eye, staring with the same look.

But, instead of being led off to another dark room with another cruel genius, the guard opened the door to the Prowler's cell. They gestured for him to enter, avoiding speaking to him it seemed.

A new cell every day. At least Kahlia wasn't stupid enough to think he would sit idly as her prisoner. Being moved from one cell to the next every day could complicate things, especially if she decided to send him to a cell somewhere else on the ship.

"There's no room for him in here," the Prowler said quickly. "I kind of take up a lot of space, guys."

"Not our problem," the guard answered with a shrug.

The Doctor entered the cell and the Prowler, for the first time that the Doctor knew of, backed up against the wall. Those brown eyes glared at the guards as they slid the door shut, and he didn't utter another syllable until they left.

"I don't . . . we can just . . . I—" the Prowler sighed as though he were greatly annoyed and stared off into space. "I can't move like this."

"You can move a bit," the Doctor offered, being sure to sit right in the corner. "I'll stay out of the way."

"We'll be fine," the Prowler muttered, it seemed as if to himself, scratching the back of his neck and forcing a smile across his lips. "How's your head?"

"Fine. I'll survive, I'm sure."

"Yeah."

There was an awkward silence and the Doctor was painfully aware of how carefully Brody was watching them. The Prowler fidgeted and shifted in his spot irritably—surely, he would be pacing again if he still had the cell to himself. Was he nervous about sharing a cell or nervous about Sevil being gone?

"What's wrong with your hand?"

"Hmm?" the Doctor followed the Prowler's eyes down to his right hand and frowned. "Nothing. It's fine."

"They didn't hurt it?"

"No . . ."

"Oh . . . it looks funny."

"It's just a hand," Brody said quietly, and the Doctor saw that he had brought his face right against the bars of his cell. "Nothing out of the ordinary."

"Actually," the Doctor piped up, watching the Prowler curiously. "It's not my original hand. I lost it in a sword fight and grew a new one."

"Sorry, did you just say you  _grew_  a new hand?" the Mechanic asked incredulously.

But the Prowler simply looked at the hand and nodded. "Yes, that must be it."

"How can you tell just by looking at it?"

"I think you'd best leave it there, Doctor," Brody spoke up. "We're not supposed to share any information that's not already known."

"Quite right," the Doctor answered, realizing that this man who had previously been so fierce could not seem to look him in the eye. "Sorry. Curiosity gets the better of me sometimes. Can't help but asking a question when it's staring me in the face."

The Prowler's eyes shifted to meet the Doctor's, unable to hide the nervousness in them the way they usually did. They shifted again, and the Doctor knew he was looking past his shoulder at Brody. Then they faced forward with a new look of determination and the Prowler crossed his arms.

"Just be careful, Doctor," the Prowler said quietly. "Because, if they've put you in here with me, it means they probably plan to use you against me."


	64. The Doctor

Sleeping had been tricky. At first, the Doctor insisted on sleeping on the floor so that the Prowler could keep his bed, but the man simply could not stay still. After the fourth time that the Prowler's shield had bumped him when he got up to pace, the younger man got fed up and practically ordered the Doctor onto the bed.

"You're old and you're hurt," the Prowler said, irritable as ever while he pressed against the back wall to let the Doctor pass. "I don't sleep anyway."

"Don't sleep or can't sleep?" the Doctor asked as he settled down on the little cot.

It was dark, but he could still see the Prowler smirk as he began his pacing again. "I've been a bit stressed lately—I'm sure you can understand. How's your head? Are you okay?"

"Healing," he answered, frowning a bit. "Are  _you_  okay?" Sevil had come back with nothing more than a bloody lip and bruised wrists—he thought that might have calmed the Prowler down, but he seemed worse than ever.

The Prowler grinned at the question as though it were some sort of joke. "Just fine."

"I tell people I'm fine sometimes."

"Look, would you just—" he began quite loudly but paused to calm himself when they heard the Mechanic groan in her sleep, and continued quietly. "It's just that the way you came back, I mean . . . what did—what did they do to you?"

The Doctor remembered the Prowler's earlier comment about the removal of clothes and suddenly he understood. "Nothing like that. Really."

"You swear?"

"I'd even pinkie-swear if your shield wouldn't break my hand."

"Okay," the Prowler was silent for another minute, pacing that built-up energy away until he was finally able to stop and sit down on the floor.

It was certainly easier to sleep through the Prowler's frequent pacing on the bed, where there was enough space for him to lie against the wall and be safe from the shield. This shared cell business meant that it had been rather impossible to communicate with Boris yet, but he had a feeling that the shadow would not yet have enough information to plan a proper escape.

When the Doctor woke in the morning, it seemed that the Prowler had finally paced enough. He was lying on the floor, curled up on his side with his face to the wall and a rolled-up shirt under his head. He was so sound asleep that he didn't wake up when the guards arrived or even when the cell door was opened. It was a bit of a challenge to get to and out the door without hitting the shield but the Doctor thought it might be safest for everyone if the Prowler didn't know that the guards were taking him.

But something wasn't right, he realized. He looked back over his shoulder at the Prowler sleeping against the wall and knew there was something not right about that image. He glanced around and caught Brody's eye and the silver-haired man raised a finger to his lips. What did Brody know?

"Are we going for a picnic then?" he found himself asking as the soldiers led him down the hall. "I do wish you'd given me some warning. I've not brought any biscuits for the tea." He glanced around, irritated by the soldiers' persistence to remain silent. "Are you afraid I'm going to hit you? I only hit people who threaten things that are important to me and you don't plan to do that because you're far too clever, unlike your friend with the broken teeth. So what sort of party should I be expecting? Anyone?"

"She wants to see you," one of the soldiers said quietly.

Ah. About time really.

He tried to force his leg to work properly and minimize his limp as they reached Kahlia's lair. He did not want her to think that her silly soldiers and their primitive methods had any effect on him. He paid close attention to the route they took, thinking he would probably need to follow it again within the next couple of days.

Kahlia's chamber was like stepping into a void. It was a large space, but entirely empty except for a black chair in the center of the room. The floor, the walls, the ceiling were all black. The only light came from four stone bowls filled with fire, one in each corner of the room.

The soldiers retreated, closing the door behind them and leaving them alone together. When the room was sealed, it was perfectly silent. The Doctor couldn't even hear the ship's engines anymore. He took a cautious step forward, eying the pale figure tending to one of the fires on the far side of the room.

"Learning to best even my father's abilities takes great discipline." Her voice echoed throughout the cavernous room, and the Doctor recognized it as a new voice. "Talent, of course, but discipline above all. This room is meant to remove all distractions. These lights were only brought in for you, Doctor."

"Must get lonely," he answered simply.

"You would know all about that."

"I know what it does to people too."

Kahlia’s eyes darted towards him as though she were offended by the words and he made himself smile. She did not look so young anymore. Where once he had seen a little girl, now he saw a young lady. Kahlia stood and he could see the curves of a woman instead of a girl and the early budding of breasts—if he knew her to be human, he would guess fifteen or sixteen. Her skin had the pale, pearl-like shimmer of her mother's people and steel grey eyes. Her black hair reached down to her hips like a sheet of onyx that matched the colour of her lips. She looked like a doll, so fragile and delicate.

"You've regenerated," he said, taking in every detail of her face.

"Yes. I had a disagreement with a man on Godforge."

"You look lovely."

"Thank you." She smiled in a way that looked genuine and walked towards him on bare feet, allowing him to see her long white satin gown. "I would return the compliment, but you look like you've seen better days."

"You can thank your men for that."

He didn't flinch when she reached up a hand to touch his cheek, but it took every ounce of strength he had not to recoil at her touch. He wanted to spit in her face. He wanted to make it clear how thoroughly she disgusted him but that wasn't how the game worked.

"My boys do get carried away at times," she said, her fingers tracing along purpled cheek bones up to the gash in his forehead. "Though I will admit I didn't stop them. I watched. I wanted to see how much of what I've heard is true."

The Doctor gazed fearlessly into her face though it was certainly unsettling to see how fascinated she looked as she investigated him. "And are you satisfied?"

"Very."

"Then you know how this will end."

She laughed quietly and then, quite alarmingly, let her hands slide down his neck to the buttons on his shirt. "With blood, of course."

"It doesn't have to."

"I think that Time itself would feel terribly wronged if it were to be any other way."

Suddenly he felt nervous, but he was determined not to show it. He kept his jaw set firmly and refused to show that he was uncomfortable, trying not to flinch when her fingers touched the tender bruises on his ribs.

"They really did have too much fun with you," she said quietly as she undid the last button and gently pushed his shirt open, revealing the canvas of colours her soldiers had left behind on his body. "This looks like it was done by the same thing that caused the wound on your head."

The Doctor kept his eyes straight forward, not wanting to look at her now, but he could tell from the way his shirt was being pulled and the feeling of the bandage being lifted that she was talking about the wound on his shoulder.

"I believe that was a chain whip your man wanted to try out."

"I'll have his head for you," she whispered, gently pushing his shirt over his shoulders and helping it glide down his arms and to the floor. "These bandages are filthy. They didn't even take you to the medical bay, did they?"

The worst part of it all—the way she spoke, the way she touched him, the way she was so cruel and yet seemed so civil—was that she was unmistakably her father's daughter. She was mad, the Doctor had no doubt, and yet perfectly in control. She had no qualms with keeping him hostage or with the fact that she intended to kill him, and yet she was displeased that he had been wounded and ill-cared for. It made him feel sick to his stomach to realize how eerily familiar her behaviour was.

Another moment passed in silence, during which he remained as solid as a stone while she slowly circled around him. She seemed to be examining him very thoroughly, her fingers tracing along every bruise and scrape she could find as though committing them to memory. He stood in that uncomfortable silence until he heard the door open behind him, the scurrying of feet as someone approached and placed something on the floor right next to where he was standing, followed by the sound of their footsteps retreating and the door closing again.

"Kneel, Doctor."

He stood firm. He hated when the Master used to say something like that to him, let alone this girl. She would have to beat him to his knees before he acted as her servant. Then she chuckled in a quiet, rather polite sounding way.

"I assure you, I'm not asking for submission. It's only that you are rather tall and, I'm afraid, I am not."

He finally moved his eyes to glance down at her, unsure. She looked up at him with those grey eyes and smiled so kindly that she could almost fool him into thinking she meant well.

"Please?"

It was not an order, he decided. She really was just asking. He eyed her suspiciously as he slowly knelt before her, his head still reaching to her shoulder even at that height.

"Thank you," she said quietly, reaching out and carefully removing any bandages that Sevil had put on him.

He carried on with his choice to allow her to do what she would without engaging her. He stared blankly ahead, speaking only when it seemed necessary, and staying still as a stone. She cleaned the wounds and applied new bandages, every step of the process taking a painfully long amount of time.

He felt her mind trying to reach into his as worked, trying to inject the same soothing emotions that Sevil had. He could feel her just on the outside, asking to be let in, and he kept the walls of his mind as stubborn and strong as he could manage. She didn't seem to mind and carried on with her work as gently as ever.

When the wounds were bandaged again she picked up the cloth she had used for cleaning them and wet it again. She dragged the cloth over the skin of his face, gently wiping away whatever had found its way there since his last proper wash in the TARDIS.

He didn't like what she was doing. It felt exactly like when Harry used to get too close, too familiar, and it made him extremely uncomfortable—the dirty feeling of having someone you loathed try to seduce you. She even brought her face quite near to his while she slid the cloth around the back of his neck, her eyes trying too hard to make contact and those black lips drawing far too near to his own. He turned his face away, being careful not to look at her, and said nothing.

Still, she seemed unperturbed. "Would you like me better if I were a man?"

"No," he answered firmly.

"Perhaps if I looked older?" she continued, bringing the cloth down to wash his chest now.

"No."

She tilted her head and raised an eyebrow at him in a very mischievous looking way. "Younger?"

"Absolutely not."

"Oh, you are sweet, Doctor," she said happily, leaning forward to peck a kiss on his cheek. "To say that you like me just as I am."

His skin was crawling, his stomach turning. He was not afraid of her, not even angry, just sick. She disgusted him so much and yet he couldn't help hearing her father's voice when she spoke. That was what it took to make Harry better, he realized, seeing a monster that was a perfect reflection of himself. No wonder Professor Yana was so determined to be a good man.

"I suppose you'd like to know the reason I called you here?"

"Yes." Oh, yes, for God's sake, get to the point. He never thought he'd be so desperate to get back to a prison cell. He wanted to get back to the uncomfortable bed and listen to Mouse fretting and watch the Prowler pace while he argued with the Mechanic until Brody told them both to pipe down. Even to go back for another beating. Anything. Anything at all that wasn't sitting here with this twisted little girl.

"I had the most wonderful idea," she smiled at him, lifting his left arm and sliding the cloth over it. "Because you are right, Doctor, it does get lonely sometimes. The trouble I have is that there are so few people I feel can challenge me. I like a challenge, Doctor."

His stomach rolled again, and he could almost taste vomit in the back of his throat. She held his hand in her own now, washing his scraped palm with the utmost care.

"There's a way we can both get out of this alive," she whispered.

She brought his hand up near her face, planting a delicate kiss on the damaged skin before guiding his hand to cup her cheek. He tried not to look at her, to keep staring past her as though she didn't exist, but it was getting harder to do. He was so tired and his emotions were beginning to catch up with him, rolling over in his stomach and rising to his throat like a sickness. Her cheek was warm, as was the hand that she placed over the back of his own, and he thought of home and missed it all terribly. He would give anything for that to be Harry's warmth.

Her hand caressed the back of his, trying to encourage him, and he did his best to ignore it. But then he felt her fingers slithering upward, reaching out for his wedding ring. He did not want her to even touch it and it was unimaginable to allow her to remove it. He closed his hand in a tight fist and yanked it back, betraying his decision not to react by releasing a quiet, but very telling, gasp.

"Your eyes are so wonderfully expressive," she said quietly, not seeming the slightest bit put off by his actions. "I understand now—why he loves you so much." She wet her cloth again and reached for his other arm. "I never really believed him when he spoke of you. I figured that most of it was the sort of delusional talk you'd expect from a heartsick madman. But I see it now."

It was all trying to come out. The Doctor could feel his hands beginning to shake and even his lips felt as though they were trying to quiver. The way she smiled at him proved that she could see it.

"You are so soft—the man who gets on his knees to devote all his attention, even if only for a moment, to a little girl just to see her smile. You were so very kind to me on Godforge." She cleaned the palm of his right hand now, pausing to kiss it just as she had the other. "And yet beneath all of that you are so savage. One of my men says the wrong thing to you and, before anyone knew what was happening or had a chance to stop you, you beat him within an inch of his life. Did they tell you that you blinded one of his eyes?"

He swallowed hard and did his best to keep his voice steady. "No."

"You did," she smiled again, proudly.

"I didn't mean to."

"No, of course not. I know that." She let his hand down and circled around to his back, wetting the cloth again and letting it drip onto his skin.

He didn't like not being able to see her, his body reacting to the discomfort by waking up every cell in his skin, becoming sensitive enough to feel the air stir when she moved. He could feel her body heat radiating against him and knew she must have been hovering within an inch of him, her breath on the back of his neck.

"I've heard you called the Destroyer of Worlds," she said softly in his ear, her hand guiding the cloth up his shoulder blade. "But any fool or coward could have used the Moment. Big events like that can even happen by mistake and history would still make you a legend. It's the small decisions that show a man's true salt, Doctor. And you make the decision to fall to your knees for a child, to go quietly into captivity to spare violence, but then beat a man bloody for threatening your love. I must say, that is . . . magnificent."

His stomach was still turning and now his eyes were beginning to sting with the threat of tears. "Thank you," he whispered, so very glad that she couldn't see his face.

"I could kneel to a man like you," she whispered, and this time her lips grazed the flesh of his neck, her hand slowly sliding down his spine. "Your death would crush my father's hearts into dust . . . but your betrayal would destroy him completely. I might not even need to finish him off after a blow like that—I imagine he would do that all on his own. And where would that leave us?"

Her fingertips brushed against his shevra and he couldn't contain himself anymore. He reacted, hissing as he drove his elbow backwards and hit her in the ribs. She stumbled to the side, nearly falling over as she yelped, and the Doctor smiled in satisfaction.

"You're just a child, Kahlia. You wouldn't even know what to do with it."

"Believe me, Doctor, I have made men crawl. I am no child," she growled, coming around to face him again with her eyes aflame with anger. "I am two hundred and eighty-six years old."

"And three quarters? Ha!" He grinned at her, so very happy to see how easily her pride was wounded. "I literally have a hat that's older than you. Your father wears it for me sometimes and, let me tell you, he  _absolutely_  knows what to do with it."

She slapped him. He imagined that she had meant for it to hurt but the reality was that her hand was small and not particularly strong. He just stared up into her eyes and loved the way it enraged her all the more.

She grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled it back, turning his face upward. "I could force you."

"You could try," he smirked. "Even the Master wasn't fool enough to make that mistake."

"I have soldiers."

"Then you would have dead soldiers."

She lifted her hand as if she intended to slap him again but he decided he'd had enough of this game. He remembered that day in the kitchen when he blinked and suddenly Harry had a knife to his throat—a valuable lesson indeed. He moved too fast for her to even react before he had her, one hand gripped the raised wrist and twisted it hard enough to bring her to her knees with a shout, while the other gripped her throat. He squeezed a little, realizing very quickly how easy it would be to simply crush her trachea right there and then.

"Hand me my shirt, would you?"

She opened her mouth as if she were going to speak but he tightened his hand a little more and nothing escaped her mouth but the pinched gasp of someone fighting to breathe. She used her free hand to hurriedly feel about the floor until she found his shirt, then held it up towards him.

Those steel eyes looked up at him, full of shock and fear. But he saw a hint of excitement in there too. Ever her father's daughter.

"The answer is no," he hissed, releasing her and snatching the shirt from her hand. "We're done here."

He was already halfway to the door by the time it burst open and the soldiers flooded inside. They pointed guns at him, but he ignored them and kept walking. When one of them tried to grab his shoulder, he simply slapped their hand away as though it were only annoyance before he began putting his shirt back on.

"Someone should tend to your mistress," he said quietly. "I'm going back to my cell. Anyone care to escort me?"

It was a shame that Boris had not come back to him yet to let him know of any found escape routes or unknown dangers. He could have easily snapped that little girl's over-confident neck and made a run for it at that very moment. But there was still more time for that. She wouldn't try to take Harry until the baby was born and that gave him plenty of time.

Entering the prison ward again felt strangely victorious. The adrenaline coursing through his body had been enough to let him walk easily without limping and he couldn't seem to keep the smirk off his face. He wasn't sure how many soldiers had decided to follow him as he had never bothered to look, but he could hear their boots falling behind him.

He winked at Mouse when they passed his cell, assuring him that the unusually large group of soldiers was nothing to fear. The others were staring at him too and he took a moment to glance at each of them in turn while he waited for his cell to be opened.

The Prowler was right at the bars, staring defiantly into the face of the soldier opening the door. "What did you do?" he growled, then turned his eyes to the Doctor. "What did they do?"

"Nothing at all," the Doctor assured him, stepping into the cell while being careful to keep enough distance from the Prowler. "Just had a wash and some new bandages, that's all."

He looked into the Prowler's eyes, with his smirk still on his face, and saw the boy relax a little. Everything was under control, he thought. Kahlia liked to talk big but, in the end, she was trapped in a fragile body with nothing but a bunch of dumb thugs to protect her. He thought he wouldn't see Kahlia again until she'd had some time to recover but, the moment the cell door locked shut with a loud clang, he looked up to see her standing there behind his swarm of soldiers.

He felt the wave of fear burst through the air as the other prisoners caught sight of her. "You didn't give me a chance to thank you, Doctor."

Her voice rang clearly through the hall, a little hoarse from the strength of his grip, but not nearly as afraid as he had hoped. She walked right up to his cell and the Prowler took a stance that looked like he was ready to attack, his knees slightly bent and his hands slightly raised and curled into fists. Maybe the Prowler was anticipating a need to defend the Doctor, but he knew it wouldn't be that simple. What was she after?

"You see, I had finally worked out one of the little puzzles that had been picking away at me," she said rather cheerfully, barely even noticing that the Prowler looked prepared to rip her to pieces. "I'd been wondering how best to dispose of it now that I don't want it anymore and you've given me the perfect idea."

She held out her hand and one of the soldiers placed a knife in it. He could see the others in the corners of his eyes—Brody stepped back from his cell door and electricity began to dance around his fingers, the Mechanic shrank back into the corner of her cell, even the Prowler took a step back though he looked closer than ever to flying into an attack.

"I felt rather silly for not having figured it out earlier," she carried on, staying just far enough away from the bars that the Doctor wouldn't be able to reach her if he tried, turning her grey eyes from one prisoner to the next. "But you know how it is . . . so many things to think about."

He heard a lock click to his right, heard Mouse let out a frightened gasp, and his hearts sank right down into his stomach. Brody shouted, the Prowler shouted, even Sevil was trying to say something, but the Doctor just felt that sickness rolling around inside him as Mouse was dragged out of his cell.

"Don't!" the Prowler shouted, jumping up against the bars of the cell door again. "Kahlia, don't!"

"This one knows my name," she said with her voice full of delight, looking the Prowler up and down as if she had only just noticed him, then glancing over at Brody with a smile. "That makes three of you now. I'm learning all kinds of things today."

Mouse was already sobbing when the soldiers pushed him to his knees, pinning his arms behind his back. He begged for mercy, assuring her that he could work. Anything she wanted him to do, he would work hard and never act out.

"I'll tell you how I got on the ship," the Prowler promised eagerly. "My tools—I'll tell you where I hid them. They're yours. I'll even teach you how to use them."

"That's sweet, kid, but I'm not interested in that right now. Maybe next time," she answered, strolling casually over to Mouse. "See, the problem was I'd never been to the Orion Satellite. If I had, I would have figured this out much sooner . . . because that's where you were going, wasn't it, poppit?"

She bent down and traced her finger along Mouse's battered face. "Please," Mouse cried, screaming in pain when one of the soldiers gave his already twisted arm another vicious yank. "Please! Oh please, please don't kill me. I don't want to—I'm not ready, please. I can't—I don't want to die."

"I'll take my shield off," the Prowler blurted.

"Prowler!" Brody barked. "Shut up!"

"You can have my blood," he continued, holding his hands out through the bars with his wrists up in offering. "You can have it. I'll give it to you. Listen to me, you can have my blood!"

"How sweet," Kahlia said, smiling up at him. "But I'm afraid that's just not good enough today, dear."

The movement was quick and unexpected. With a spurt of blood and a scream, suddenly she had Mouse's right ear in her hand. "The Orion Satellite specializes in creation, distribution, and trade of new weapons and medicine," she said happily, tossing the ear at the Doctor's feet and turning her eyes back to the sobbing man on the ground. "It's standard procedure for employees and students to have a telepathic dampening field chip installed in their earlobes to protect trade secrets and patents. The other men on the ship didn't have them because they were just delivery boys, but  _you_ ," she bent down and lifted Mouse's chin with her hand, stroking his cheek almost fondly while he asked again to be spared. "You'd already had the chip installed because you were hoping for a bright future on the Satellite."

"You've made your point," the Doctor hissed, turning his eyes away from the pitiful sight on the floor. "Leave him be."

She looked the Doctor in the face and smiled. "No."

"I'll  _give_  you the shield. You can have it," the Prowler tried again. "I'll tell you my name. I know your name, Kahlia, don't you want to know how?"

"You don't seem to get this, I'm not  _interested_  in  _you_  right now," she turned back towards Mouse and grinned. "Let's see how well your mind is protected now."

And Mouse screamed like he was on fire.

"Brody!" the Prowler shouted, his eyes frantically turning to the silver-haired man instead.

Mouse's entire body shook and fought as though he were being held over a hot flame, screaming with pain in the kind of way the Doctor had not heard since the war. Brody had leapt forward and was shouting at Kahlia, along with all three of the others now, but he could not tell what they were saying over the screaming.

Mouse fought so hard against the soldiers' grip that the Doctor heard bones breaking. His shoulder visibly popped out of its socket, his wrist turned at an impossible angle trying to break free, his face struck the hard floor in his desperation, and none of it even slowed him down. As his body was fractured and broken in the struggle, the pain of that was nothing compared to whatever Kahlia was forcing into his head.

"Stop it," the Doctor choked on the words as they came out. "Stop it, Kahlia. Just stop! Stop it, please!"

She looked at him and, though he still screamed, Mouse suddenly stopped fighting and collapsed to the floor. "You said please," she whispered excitedly. "Good boy."

And just like that, she walked around behind Mouse, grabbed a hand full of his hair to lift his head, and slit his throat from ear to ear. Blood poured out onto the floor as the air filled with a storm of angry screams. The Prowler leapt against the bars like a wildcat, electricity danced through the air all around them, the Mechanic was throwing anything she could through the bars of her cage, and he could see Sevil's hand desperately stretching through the bars towards Mouse, likely hoping against hope that she would be able to heal him.

The horrendous noise seemed to blur together and become almost nothing. All he could really hear was the terrible gurgling sound of Mouse's last, terrible breaths. Kahlia looked straight into the Doctor's eyes and smiled. He stared right back and thought that he never should have let go of her throat.

Suddenly, Kahlia coughed and her eyes grew wide and panicked. Her hand came up to her throat and she coughed again, and, through all the chaos, the Doctor realized she was choking. Was  _he_  doing that? No, he couldn't be.

Kahlia looked at the Doctor fearfully but she seemed to know that he hadn't done anything and turned her eyes around to the rest of the room instead. He felt the forceful burst of her telepathic energy and heard her gasping to recover the breath she'd lost, but that didn't help the soldiers who were losing consciousness behind her.

The Doctor caught the look on Brody's face at the same moment that Kahlia did—absolute calm. His silver eyes were set as hard as stones and fingers of electricity shot through the air around him like a sentient storm. Suddenly the choking soldiers were being hit by Brody's bolts, falling dead one by one.

Kahlia bent down by Mouse's still twitching body and picked up the knife. As another soldier dropped dead, she threw it viciously and, had Brody not been quick enough, it would have hit him squarely in the chest. Instead the knife struck his shoulder and a fresh burst of electricity surged through the air when he roared in anger.

Kahlia turned and ran, but not a single one of her men followed her. The Doctor stared at the pile of bodies on the floor in awe, turning and seeing the Prowler's paled face was full of as much shock as his own. Suddenly he was aware of Sevil crying and the Doctor looked down to see her hand still trying desperately to reach Mouse.

The young man stretched out his arm as far as he could, just barely meeting Sevil's fingertips. A horrible raspy, gurgling sound emerged from his throat, bringing up a fresh wash of blood with it. He was trying to speak, but Kahlia's cruelty would not even permit him a chance for last words. The Prowler was on his knees now, reaching his hand through the bars and coming within a few inches of Mouse's other hand, but the dying man's broken bones prevented him from reaching back.

"I'm sorry," the Doctor whispered as Mouse looked up at him, remembering the promise he'd made such a short time ago to get them all home. "I'm so sorry."

And he watched, helpless, as the light in those blue eyes went out.


	65. The Doctor

The first hit was enough to daze him. The pressure vanished, and he felt himself start to slide a little down the wall before he was hit again—a solid wall striking him with the force of a full grown man.

"Prowler, please—" his own voice sounded strange, his mind confused and trying to make sense of the chaos. "Please, stop it." But the force hit him again, slamming him against the wall behind him.

"You're gonna kill him!"

That was Brody's voice. The Prowler listened to Brody. The Prowler listened to  _only_  Brody it seemed. And, just as the Doctor had expected—well,  _hoped_  really—the Prowler stopped. He began slipping down the wall and reached out for the bed, just managing to stop himself from hitting the floor and landing on the mattress instead.

"Look what you've done!"

"Prowler, just leave him!" Brody barked.

"No!" the Prowler shouted back at him, then turned to look the Doctor in the face. "You come swaggering in here like the king of world 'cause you're so  _bloody_  clever when you'd just  _pissed her off_! Now Mouse is fucking  _dead_! That's  _your_  fault! You pissed her off to feed your ego and look at what happened!"

"I didn't," the Doctor muttered, his head still swimming from the sudden and forceful blows. "I'm sorry, I really didn't—"

"You didn't  _think_!" the Prowler roared. "Because you're the Doctor and you don't need to think because you can just grow a new body, but other people  _don't_! Okay!? You're not in fucking Kansas anymore, Toto! Other people  _die_!"

"You need to stop," Brody hissed, and the Doctor could see him leaning with his face right against the bars. "You need to calm down. Stop and look and remember what's important right now."

The Doctor looked up into those brown eyes full of rage and felt pieces fitting together in his mind. "You said I was a myth," he said quietly.

" _What_?"

The way the Prowler said it made him hesitate to say anything more. He was trapped in a cage with a young man who seemed ready to rip him apart and had the ability to crush him to death by simply stepping forward. The Prowler noticed the hesitation and the anger suddenly gave way to grief, letting his head fall back and stopping just to breathe.

So, he didn't really want to fight then. "You said I was a myth before," the Doctor said carefully, keeping his eye on Brody as it seemed the Ginu'un had a much better sense of how the Prowler's temper worked. "Now you're talking about me like you've known all about me."

"I said Time Lords were myths," the Prowler corrected.

"And I'm a Time Lord."

"And evidently the man knows his mythology," Brody answered, glaring at the Doctor now. "We shouldn't be talking about any of this. You've both been careless today and we don't need any more bodies in here so just shut up."

The Mechanic leaned forward to look at the terrible sight on the other side of the bars. "How long do you think they'll leave them here?" she asked, gasping through her tears.

"Hopefully not long," Brody answered glumly.

The Doctor watched as the Prowler succumbed to his emotions, barely controlling his breathing as tears rolled down his cheeks. He was so young, barely older than Mouse had been. His body was not yet riddled with the scars of time and experience, his heart not yet hardened to the tragedies of life. He was frightened.

He should have noticed the triggers that made the Prowler aggressive. He was fearless in the face of a man with a gun, but suddenly he fretted and worried whenever someone else was hurt or in danger. The implications of the Doctor returning unclothed had infuriated him. The Prowler was not afraid for himself, but he  _was_  afraid.

"I wasn't trying to be smart," the Doctor said quietly. "I didn't go to her with the intention of making her angry or of showing off, I promise."

"She came down here in person," the Prowler answered, trying to look defiant but not really pulling it off through such wet eyes. "She  _never_  comes down here."

"I said didn't  _intend_  to make her angry. Things just didn't quite go as expected and I . . ."

"What happened?" the young man demanded.

The Doctor looked into those brown eyes, then to Brody’s across the way, then finally to the blue ones that had grown dim on the floor, and felt ashamed. "She offered me my life," he answered quietly, feeling another squirm of revulsion in his stomach. "If I became her . . . consort. If I betrayed those that I love and offered them as sacrifices, she would let me live. She tried to . . ."

He suddenly felt extremely uncomfortable. He could see the Prowler's face changing to a whole new mixture of emotion and every instinct he had told him that he shouldn't be speaking of such things. He pulled his feet up onto the bed, wanting to curl up into a ball and disappear, wanting to wake up in bed next to Harry and feel his baby kicking away. Would the universe ever be so kind as to allow this all to have been a dream?

"Anyway, I told her no. She got aggressive and . . ." He looked away from the Prowler, at the mess of blood and bodies on the floor. "I got aggressive back. Probably more than I should have."

"Shit." The Prowler turned away from him and put his forehead against the wall.

The Doctor closed his eyes and tried not to think about the smell. The air was full of it—blood and burnt flesh. Mouse was just lying there with his eyes wide open and his throat ripped apart, staring. He looked right into the Doctor's eyes as he died, and the Doctor felt the whispers of his last thoughts echoing in his mind.

_ You were supposed to save us _ .

"Alright," the Prowler said, turning back around, wiping his face on his arm and taking a deep breath. "Tell me what you saw."

"What?"

Brody's head shot up and the Doctor saw the startled look on his face. "Hey, no. It's not safe."

"Whatever he noticed, the Nightmare will have noticed too," the Prowler answered stubbornly, crossing his arms and staring down at the Doctor while being careful not to glance in the direction of the massacre. "She did that in front of us all for a reason. She hurt him like that for a reason. Don't think she wasn't watching us, Brody."

Brody opened his mouth as if he were going to argue, but quickly closed it. Just as the Doctor thought—they had both shown their cards a bit more than they were comfortable with during that chaotic moment.

"I'm sorry, Doctor," the Prowler said quietly, his still red eyes looking straight at him. "I shouldn't have attacked you like that. Forgive me."

"Of course."

"How's your head?"

"Fine."

"Did you hurt your hand?"

He frowned in confusion but, when he looked down, he saw blood spattered across his hand. "No, it's fine. It's . . . not mine."

"Alright, now," the Prowler crouched, with his back still against the wall. "Tell me what you noticed."

"You've got blood on you," the Doctor blurted.

The Prowler looked down at his hands, then his feet. The Doctor pointed out the tiniest, barely noticeable spatter of droplets on the outside of his wrist and the Prowler's eyes widened greatly.

"Fuck."

"Yes, I thought so," the Doctor answered quietly. "I knew there was something off about your shield before, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Last night you slept right against the wall but I know for a fact that Sevil was sleeping on the bed right on the other side of the same wall—your shield hit me through the wall but not her. Then you reached out for Mouse, got very close, and nothing seemed to touch him. I thought maybe if the shield's anchor was based on your core that you could probably stretch to the edge of it without it moving which, of course,  _would_  allow you to get close, but why try? Why would you try to reach him if you knew you couldn't touch him? Then I saw the blood splatter hit you and it proved what I suspected: the shield doesn't keep  _everyone_  out."

"Damn it, Prowler!" Brody hissed, and suddenly he was the one pacing.

The Doctor looked into those strong and defiant eyes and wondered aloud. "How do you get the shield to let you in?"

"I'm not giving you any new information, Doctor," the Prowler said firmly.

"You're not, but he is," the Doctor replied. "I'm surprised at you, Brody. You seem so careful and yet you don't seem to realize that acting so protective is giving away your game."

Brody's eyes widened. "I don't—I'm not sure what—"

"You get antsy and start telling the Prowler to shut up before he's really said anything, like you know what he's going to say," the Doctor explained. "You seem stressed out when he slips up but not surprised, because it's not news to you. More than that, he listens to you. This strong-willed, stubborn beast of a man listens to just about every word you say. You two know each other."

The Prowler smirked. What for? Was he wrong?

"You told the Nightmare you would tell her where you hid your tools but, if you were caught in the middle of trying to steal something, why would you hide them? Surely you would be using your tools in the middle of your heist?"

"What if I was waiting for the weakest time for security?"

"No." He might have smiled if the stench of blood wasn't so thick in the air. "You know her name. If you know that, that means you did your research thoroughly and you would know the security schedules. You didn't come to steal valuables, you came to steal people. You're not a thief—you're a rescue mission. And I'm going to take a lucky guess that Brody can step through that shield of yours."

"Then why did I get caught?"

"Don't know. Haven't worked that part out yet," he answered quickly, getting a little caught up in the deconstruction of it all. "You've got an impenetrable shield, but no weapons  _and_  you didn't resist arrest. You wanted to get caught, I just don't know why."

"That's a lot to have worked out in a few short moments of angry screaming," the Prowler whispered, seeming genuinely surprised.

"Well, I am quite clever," he answered simply. "And then of course there's the other part."

"What other part?" Brody asked.

"The part that tells me he doesn't just work for you, Brody. You two care about each other," he glanced at the dead soldiers strewn about the ground outside his cell and sighed. "These soldiers were killed with your electricity but that's not why they were dying."

The Prowler took a sharp intake of breath and the Doctor saw him visibly tense up.

"They were choking to death, all of them. Sevil's Ferraxian and the Mechanic is human, and neither of those species can choke a person to death without touching them. My thoughts automatically turned to you but, at the same time, I realized that they've never gotten a hold of Brody's blood. Maybe he's not just Ginu'un? Maybe he's a half breed with some interesting abilities?" He glanced over at Brody and saw that he was incredibly tense as well. "But then I saw the electricity."

"I think you lot have talked enough," the Mechanic said suddenly, sounding fearful.

"Let Sherlock finish," the Prowler said, holding up his hand to silence her.

He smirked. "Brody tried to cover for you. He thought that if he killed the soldiers with his electricity, no one would notice that they started choking first. That means it was you. You and your temper. That not only tells me that you're not human, it tells me that Brody cares about you. He cares about you enough to kill half a dozen soldiers to keep your secrets. You're not some hired mercenary. You're old friends . . . at  _least_  friends."

"My word, is all of that true?" Sevil's voice asked through the wall. "Brody? Prowler? Is it true?"

"Some of it," Brody answered, sounding breathless and rather in shock.

"But not all," the Prowler finished, looking rather impressed. "Are you finished?"

"Nearly."

"What else could you possibly know?" Sevil asked with true surprise in her voice.

"You are both extremely capable men," the Doctor continued at a whisper. "You work together seamlessly, and you don't seem to have issues against violence. Together, without a doubt, you could break out of here. Something is keeping you here."

"Not for much longer," the Prowler answered.

"Alright, that's enough," Brody said sternly. "You said you just wanted to hear what he knew. We end this conversation now."

"Hold on, Brody," the Prowler said, his eyes fixed firmly on the Doctor's with a glint of a challenge in them. "Do you want to know what you didn't notice?"

"Prowler, just stop! This isn't a bloody game!"

Brody was right. He was absolutely right. Even what he'd said so far wasn't really wise, just in case Kahlia wasn't quite as clever as they gave her credit for. But those eyes just pulled him in and dared him to ask.

"What?"

The Prowler leaned in as close as he could and whispered. "You didn't notice a shadow that doesn't belong."

The Doctor’s eyes immediately looked downward at the Prowler's shadow and realized it was far too wide and at an odd angle for the light. Boris. What was he doing sitting in here when he was meant to be gathering information? Was he trapped in the Prowler's shield?

"And you also didn't notice the very first words you heard me say, Doctor."

The Doctor frowned, completely and utterly confused for a moment. What was he talking about? What was Boris doing? What was this madman doing sitting in a cell while people died when he could rescue his friend and escape at any moment?

"Prowler, don't be stupid," Brody growled.

"You said . . ." He had to think about it, remembering the first time he spotted those brown eyes from Brody's cell. "You said that Time Lords were a myth."

"No," the Prowler answered simply, and his eyes shone completely truthful. "Before that."


	66. Jack

Jack knew that Shaun was brilliant, but it was easy to see that he was in a little over his head with this one. Time Lord 'bigger-on-the-inside' technology was confusing enough as it was but, when Harry took away the 'inside' part, it looked like poor Shaun had blown a fuse.

In all fairness, Harry was incredibly hard to understand sometimes. With the baby growing so large and aware, their minds had a tendency to get muddled up together. On top of that, Harry worried so much about the Doctor that his mind raced off without his permission sometimes to look for him. Twice, he had managed to connect with the Doctor's mind. The first time had been two days ago, and Harry reported that Doctor was calm, but in pain. The second time was last night, when Harry muttered that the Doctor felt sick and frightened. He hadn't connected with him since, and the stress of that was easy to see on Harry's face.

"So, we're making the  _outside_  bigger on the . . . outside?"

" _Yes_!" Harry answered with an exasperated sigh. "Well . . . no. Forget about it being bigger on  _any_  side. The point is it's inter-dimensional, alright?"

Shaun stared at the tiny square of black metal like a deer in headlights. "Alright . . ."

"Think about standing with one foot inside the TARDIS and one foot out. It looks like everything's normal but really, according to the dimension outside of the TARDIS, the half of you that's inside is compressed down to something so small that it probably wouldn't even be visible."

". . . O-okay . . ."

"That's what we're doing."

Shaun took a moment to digest the words, making a face as if he were sucking on something sour. "So . . . we're compressing it?"

"It  _is_  compressed. We're blowing it up," Harry answered quickly. "Well, blowing it up when it's conven—oh, would you  _sit still_?"

"I'm not moving."

"Not you," Harry grumbled, placing his hand over the ever-growing mound on his chest. "Now pay attention because this is where it gets complicated."

It was eventually worked out that Harry was using small chips of dwarf star alloy to make cloaks against security systems. The alloy was impenetrable to everything, preventing any computer or scanner in the world from ever seeing past it. The trouble was that it blocked even sound, they wouldn't be able to see through it, and it was remarkably heavy.

Harry's solution had been to capture the alloy in a state of inter-dimensional flux where one half was caught in a dimension where it was much bigger than it was meant to be, rather like an object sticking halfway through the TARDIS doors. For the most part, they would just be wearing a little piece of black stone around their necks but, if they activated the dimensional gateway, the expanded dwarf star alloy would bleed through enough to keep them protected without blinding them.

Harry rattled it all off like it made perfect sense while Jack and Shaun struggled to understand a word of it. Eventually, Jack got fed up and told Harry that he didn't care about how it worked (though Shaun was determined to work it out), and he just wanted to know what he had to do to make sure it functioned.

The work had been furious the last three days. Jack wasn't sure how he expected Harry to behave after the Doctor went missing, but he didn't expect quite so much energy. Once the Doctor's sedative had worn off properly, Harry tore through the TARDIS like a mad man to dig up every half-finished project he thought would be useful.

Shaun had been given the job of adapting his gravity manipulator shields to fit on a wrist strap so that they could activate and deactivate them when needed. Jack was sent to work the ship's console, figuring out how to find and track Kahlia, or else working on getting a set of vortex manipulators working. Donna searched the ship for weapons or any other useful tools, while Wilfred did odd jobs and kept everyone fed.

They were almost ready. Harry refused to make an attempt on Kahlia's ship until his security cloaks were finished, saying they wouldn't last two minutes without them. They needed to stay undetected for as long as they possibly could if they were going to have a chance.

The three of them had been working on them together in one of the TARDIS's many working labs when a strange noise filled the air. Over the communications system of the ship, loud and clear for everyone on board to hear, a shrill and repetitive ringing.

Shaun looked at Harry curiously. "Is that a phone?"

"That's a phone."

They dashed from the lab to the hallway and hurried along to the control room. Jack glanced back over his shoulder at Harry and worried once again, as he had many times the last couple of days. Denndi are tough and Harry had even dragged the biology book out to prove it after Wilfred had fretted over him. He could run without needing to worry about the baby being shaken up or hurt, but that didn't mean it was easy for him. Jack could see from Harry's face that it was getting difficult and more than a little uncomfortable.

Shaun reached the door first, burst through it, rushed to the console, and slammed his hand down on the speaker button. "Hello? Yes, hello?" he said, gasping.

"Hello," a voice answered uncertainly. "May I speak with John Noble?"

Shaun's brows squeezed together and he opened his mouth, but Harry punched him in the shoulder to silence him. "He's not home," Harry answered quickly. "I can take a message."

"And with whom do I speak now?"

"Harold Mott."

"What are you doing?" Jack whispered anxiously.

"It's a test," Harry whispered back. "They want to make sure they're talking to the right people. Only a friend would know us by those names."

"I understand something was taken from you, Master Mott."

"Yes, and I want it back."

"We will take it back for you."

"Not a chance," Harry answered without hesitation. Jack noticed his hands flexing and bunching into fists. "I don't even know who you are."

"I am a messenger of the Star," the voice continued calmly. "Your actions on Earth saved his life and he would like to show his appreciation by disposing of your mutual enemy."

"He will do no such thing," the Time Lord hissed. "If he wants to help, he can speak to me himself and I will tell him what needs to be done."

"I'm afraid it is out of our hands," the voice continued. "A Ginu'un fleet has been dispatched to attack the Nightmare. They have their own priorities and will not stand down nor guarantee the safe removal of that which was taken from you. The Star is sending his own army of followers into the fray—a pre-emptive strike before the war begins. It is estimated to begin in seven hours. In eight hours, your Doctor will be returned to you. The Star asks only that you stand aside."

"And here I was, thinking that the Star actually knew something about me."

"He understands that you survive," the voice answered without a second thought. "This is how you survive, Master Mott. Just this once . . . stay at home."

The line went dead and silence hovered over them. Jack glanced at Harry and saw he was smiling. It was an odd smile though and a slightly frightening one, as though the thought of dying in battle were somehow exciting.

"Harry," Shaun said quietly. "What do you want us to do?"

"We continue as planned," Harry answered, bringing his hand up to rest on the denndi the way he did so often now. "If Kahlia has to worry about two separate armies coming after her, she'll hardly be looking down corridors for people who don't belong or worrying about her prisoners. Our best chance is to get on board when the Star and the Ginu'un fleet arrive."

"Maybe we shouldn't," Jack suggested and, just as he expected, Harry shot him a dirty look. "Look, I know what you're thinking," he explained quickly. "Just hear me out. This Star guy seems to really know what he's doing. What if he's got some amazing plan and us showing up is just going to ruin it? What if the best thing is really to just let him handle it? I mean, you're not exactly in top condition right now, Harry. If you don't have to put the baby at risk, then why not?"

Harry's eyes called him a coward even if his mouth didn't. "He wouldn't leave me there."

"What if I just go?" Jack answered again eagerly. "You stay here and take care of your child and I'll go after the Doctor. I can't die! I've got a way better chance of getting him out."

"Wait, you can't die?"

"Not now, Shaun."

"No, hold on," Shaun persisted. "What do you mean you can't die? Because, if you mean it as literally as it sounds, I don't know why we don't just chuck you and Kahlia into a pit together to fight it out."

"Shaun!" Harry barked.

"I'm just  _saying_!"

"The Doctor wouldn't leave me there," Harry said firmly. "He wouldn't sit by and hope that someone else would get me out, especially some stranger. He would come after me. Even if it was the maddest, stupidest thing in the world, he would come after me . . . and God help the man that tried to stop him."

"I understand that," Jack tried again. "But we need to be logical about this."

"Well, logic tells me that the Star is clever. And if he's clever, he knows that I won't stand down." Harry's eyes turned back to the speaker on the console, as if he were trying to see the entity that had spoken to them through it. "Maybe even counting on it. You can stay if you like, but I'm going. In case you've forgotten, that's my husband and my daughter on that ship—I can hardly say it's none of my business."

"Then I have work to do," Shaun said quietly. "I'll go talk to Wilfred and Donna. They'll want to know what happened. I'll meet you back in the lab."

Jack watched Shaun walk from the control room, with his face full of fresh determination. When the door closed, he turned his eyes back to Harry. He was so tired, that much was plain. How much had he slept since the Doctor was taken? He kept placing his hands on the denndi, caressing it as though he were trying to soothe it. The baby must have been sensitive to Harry's emotions, knowing that something was wrong and that there was reason to worry.

"Just let me go, Harry," he said quietly, softly, putting his hand on Harry's shoulder and squeezing it gently. "This doesn't have to be your fight."

"Have you ever wondered why I did it, Jack?" Harry's voice sounded cold, but he didn't push Jack's hand away. "You've seen my life's work. You know what kind of value I put on life. Have you ever wondered how I could so thoughtlessly kill the way I did when life itself means so much to me?"

"Well . . ." Jack paused a little awkwardly, shifting his weight and uncertain. "Honestly, I figured it was just because you were nuts."

Harry shook his head and looked Jack in the eye, with an almost hungry look. "It's the  _fight_ ," he whispered. "Every living thing in the universe is the product of an eternal struggle to  _live_. Anything becomes infinitely more valuable when people are willing to fight over it. You don't have a right to life; you have to  _earn_  it. Our ancestors bit and clawed and savaged their way into existence. Every quirk of biology, every natural gift, every instinct that drives you is the result of billions of years of warfare against the whole of creation. It's our willingness to fight for it, our need to protect it that makes life such a wondrous thing. Every person that ever died snivelling at my feet just told me that they didn't want it enough—that their lives were worthless to them. What good is a diamond or a painting in a world that does not adore them? The fight is what  _makes_  it beautiful. The fight is  _everything_."

Jack looked at Harry with an odd sense of shame. He'd known that Harry was not a fan of his immortality, but he had never thought of why. Jack had died so many times that he hardly thought about it anymore. He could fearlessly stare down the barrel of a loaded gun or at the countdown clock of a bomb, knowing he would wake up again.

His life was certainly not meaningless, but it was not an ounce as valuable as he had once thought it to be. He remembered seeing those people at the end of the universe, their drive to survive, and how dedicated Professor Yana was to the cause of ensuring their continued existence. He felt inspired then.

Did Harry despise him? Did he see Jack as an empty shell? If the fight was everything, did that mean he was nothing in Harry's eyes?

"So, when it is the Doctor's life before the fire," Harry continued quietly. "How can I do anything but fight for it?"


	67. The Doctor

The Doctor wanted out of that cell. He would rather be in with anybody else than to stay with the Prowler. He was frightened of him now. Before, he had thought of the Prowler as little more than an anxious kid who couldn't sit still and wanted to get home—just another prisoner to save.

Now he was a threat. Everything about him told the Doctor that this man had too much to lose and he was frightened. If he coupled that with the fact that it seemed the Prowler could kill a man without touching them and had quite the temper, he suddenly found himself feeling very uncomfortable being trapped in a cell with him.

Worse still, the Doctor knew what that nagging feeling had been now—the Prowler's face. He'd seen that face before and heard his voice, but he couldn't, for the life of him, remember where. He had an image of the Prowler looking at him with a half smile upon his lips and a mischievous look in his eye, but everything else was a blur. Over nine hundred years of memories and the Prowler could have appeared in any of them. In a shop, on a street corner, running for dear life—he could have been there for anything. He could  _know_  anything.

The bodies were left on the floor for over an hour before someone arrived to deal with it. The Doctor watched as one of them carefully laid a bag against the wall, handling it gingerly as though it might explode. There was a soldier for each cell door with a gun pointed inside while a group of other soldiers hurriedly carried and dragged the corpses away. The Doctor watched with a feeling of rot in his gut as Mouse's lifeless eyes slid past the bars of the door, dragging a trail of thickening blood behind him.

"We shouldn't have these two monsters in together," one of the soldiers said shakily.

" _What_?" the Doctor shot back. "Sorry, did you just call  _us_  the monsters? Have you seen what your boss did to that poor boy?"

"Quiet!"

"Nobody here, with all the things you've done, gets to call  _me_  a monster," he roared angrily, glaring at the soldier through the bars. "And trust me when I say you haven't even  _begun_  to see the monster in me."

The leader of their group pushed his way forward and looked the Doctor in the eye. "Open the door. Get him out."

The Doctor did feel a small amount of relief at those words, but it didn't really matter anymore. He was angry now. An innocent man had been killed just to make a point and they would dare point a finger at  _him_? He was prepared for a fight, hoping to make a point of his own, but the Prowler stopped him.

He felt the pressure of that great and solid shield pushing him back, driving him away from the bars by the Prowler's carefully planned movements. As the door was opened, the Doctor had no choice but to move to the back of the cell and leave the Prowler to stand between him and the soldier.

"Move aside," the soldier ordered, pointing his gun at the Prowler's head. "I  _will_  shoot."

"Oh, please do. In fact, you had really better," the Prowler answered almost too eagerly. "Because if you lay a finger on that man I will rip your insides out so fast you will get to watch your last heartbeat."

"Prowler," Brody's voice said, though it sounded tired and lacked its usual command.

The Doctor watched as the soldiers anxiously shifted, some stepping forward and then quickly changing their minds. The commander ordered the one at their door to remove the Doctor again and the soldier took another step forward, clearly hesitant.

"Let me take a lucky guess here," the Prowler said, with something that sounded almost like pity in his voice. "Today is your first day?"

The soldier gave a quick nod and took another step inside, keeping his gun trained on the Prowler while his eyes stayed on the Doctor. Another step and the Doctor quickly realized that he should have hit the shield by then. He was too close.

The Prowler smiled ever so slightly and whispered, "Then I'm sorry, mate."

The movement was so fast that the Doctor nearly missed it. In one fluid motion the Prowler grabbed the end of the gun, yanking it to free it from the soldier's hand while turning him to the side, then his hands shot upwards. In a blur of motion and with a sickening  _crack_ , the Prowler grabbed the soldier's head and snapped his neck, then had the gun pointed at the other soldiers before the body even hit the floor.

"Send in another!"

There was a moment when no one breathed. The Doctor felt his hearts racing in his chest, his eyes wide as he stared at yet another body and the fearlessness in the Prowler's eyes. He meant it. Looking at those eyes, there was no doubt in the Doctor's mind that the Prowler was prepared to kill any man that dared to challenge him now.

"Let's play a game!" the Prowler announced almost merrily, waving the gun at the soldiers standing before him. "Who can make it through my shield? If you can't, I crush you to death against the wall. If you  _can_ , I drop you like an animal with my bare hands. Now, you do have a slight chance of overpowering me but, let's face it boys, you can't. In case that wasn't enough to convince you just exactly how fucking stupid it would be to test me now, need I remind you that I now have a gun?"

"We will shoot you where you stand!" the commander warned.

"No, you won't," the Prowler answered calmly. "If you could, you would have already. But we both know your little Nightmare too well. We are  _her_  prisoners, not yours, and the stink of fear is all over you. What's in the bag?"

The commander's eyes turned to where the bag had been laid, to the side of their cell and beyond their vision. "A gift for the Doctor," he answered quietly. "From our Lady."

"Bring it over here. I want your men to see it," the Prowler said, actually smiling now. "I said bring it!"

A soldier stepped into view with the cloth bag in his arms. Now that he had a better look at it, the Doctor knew what it was before it was even opened. He should have known that Kahlia was good on her word.

The soldier holding it took a quick step backwards when he opened the bag and the head dropped to the floor with a thud and a spatter of fluids. It rolled a couple of feet, earning gasps and groans of disgust, before stopping. The Doctor recognized the face of the man who had wielded the chain whip, though it now sported an injury identical to that on the Doctor's own forehead.

"One of your own," the Prowler said, pointing his free hand at the Doctor. "She killed one of your own for the mark he left on the Doctor. Do you really think she'll be impressed if you go shooting her beloved pets? Especially when it's your own incompetence that got you in this position in the first place?"

The Doctor wasn't sure what to do. Was this it? Was this the Prowler's plan of escape? His eyes darted to the Prowler's shadow, looking for a sign of Boris. He really needed to connect with the swarm so that he could plan his next move. It seemed utterly foolish to plan an escape through this much hostility when he could just get Boris to rip the bars open for them when they were ready.

"Now here's what we're going to do," the Prowler said as calmly as he could manage. "I'm going to keep this gun until our little exchange here is finished. First off, one of you is going to be so very kind as to let the Doctor into His Majesty's cell and provide him with any medical supplies he asks for. Second, you're going to get the rest of those bodies out of here, as well as that stinking head. When he is the last, I will get against the back wall so that you can retrieve your little friend here. When everything is cleaned up, all the doors are closed and locked again, I will give you back your gun. You will say nothing of this to the Nightmare for your safety as much as for mine."

The Prowler stepped to the side, making enough room for the Doctor to get past him to the open door. It was terribly silent, and the Doctor paused near the bars to look back at the Prowler's face. His jaw was set, eyes full of determination, and his hand showed no sign of quivering as it held the gun outward.

"Trust me when I tell you this, Doctor," the Prowler said quietly when he stopped. "Not even a month ago, I was an entirely different man. I was only a naïve fool who was too afraid to do what needed to be done. Now I understand you."

The Doctor looked at those brown eyes and saw something so familiar in them. Those eyes. Where did he know those eyes?

"Brody is unconscious, Doctor," the Prowler muttered now, waving the gun a little to encourage him to move. "He's lost a lot of blood and you need to help him now."

The Doctor hurried out of the cell and across to Brody's. The Prowler was right; the Ginu'un man had slumped against the wall and down to the floor. The knife Kahlia threw at him was still wedged in his shoulder and had helped hold back some of the bleeding, but the loss was still considerable.

He tried to put the Prowler out of his mind. He tried not to think about how quickly this situation could go wrong. He pretended not to see Mouse's body piled onto the hover transport with the others, or the head of a man that had been killed in his name. For now, he needed to block out everything and just focus on taking care of Brody's injury.

Thankfully, he was provided with good tools and even a cell replicator to help Brody's body begin replenishing its blood supply. But he saw through the corner of his eye that the game for Brody was over. There was too much blood to keep track of—on his clothes, the floor, the bars of the door. The Doctor couldn't reliably clean it all and he'd already seen one soldier exit the cell with blood on the bottom of his shoe. It would not take them long to check the DNA and, if they didn't like the answer, he was certain Brody would be in for a far crueler fate than Mouse.

When the work was done, the Prowler kept his word. He allowed them to remove the body from his cell without any fuss. When the doors were all secured, he calmly walked up to the door, put the gun on the floor through the bars, and stepped back again. The soldiers took all the bodies and left without another word, seemingly in as much shock as everyone else.

"That was insane," the Doctor hissed once they had been left alone again. "What are you playing at? You're gonna get us all killed."

"We are all going to die here," Sevil said quietly.

The Doctor looked across at her cell and saw her kneeling on the floor. Her eyes were wide as she stared at Brody's unconscious body and her face wore the shadow of fear.

"He's not dying, Sevil," the Doctor assured her, then turned his eyes to the next cell. "Prowler," he said quietly. "The bleeding . . ."

"I know," the Prowler answered quickly with a nod of his head. "It'll be okay." He was pacing again. Nervous.

"I don't know how long it will take for them to complete the tests."

"It doesn't matter," the Prowler answered again, almost dismissively. "Listen, Doctor. I want you to know that I've never done anything like that before in my life. I didn't even know what I was doing."

The Doctor remembered the fluid motion the Prowler had used, like snapping a man's neck was second nature to him. "You seemed like quite the expert."

"I'm not. I'm really not." He shook his head and began pacing again. "Things have gotten a little out of hand for me. I panicked."

"Hell of a way to panic."

"What else was I supposed to do?"

"You should have just let them take me."

"Why?" the Prowler insisted. "To spare a soldier who knowingly works for the  _Nightmare_?"

"To spare yourself," the Doctor answered bitterly. "So that killing someone doesn't suddenly become easy."

He didn't look up, but he could almost feel the Prowler's eyes burning into him. "See, this is how people get stuck in their faith of heroes and gods," the Prowler said quietly. "An ordinary man does something extraordinary and everyone thinks he's something special. I'm not a trained assassin or a warrior, or whatever you're building me up to be in your head. I'm an engineer." He growled the words out, his eyes staring at him full of challenge. "Hell, I'm not even that. I'm an engineering student. My parents complain that I don't follow their advice, my big sister can still beat me in an arm wrestle, and there’s a girl back home that doesn't notice me. I'm just some bloke—a regular guy caught in a bad situation. I'm not going to stand aside and say 'shit happens' because I'm afraid that, during my so-very-violent life of building machines, I'll start killing people willy-nilly because once upon a time I took the life of an aiding-and-abetting bastard to save an innocent one."

"You don't even know if they were planning to hurt me. Maybe he actually just wanted to move me to another cell."

"I wasn't talking about you, you moron! I'm talking about Brody!" the Prowler shouted back in exasperation. "He'd been bleeding for over an hour and they didn't even get somebody to look at him! What if he was dying? Although, yeah, now that you mention it, I probably saved your life too. You're bloody welcome!"

"We could be out of here by now if you hadn't hijacked my swarm," the Doctor spat before he could stop himself. "This could have been in and out. He just needed to scout an escape route and then we'd all be gone."

"And what? You were gonna talk your way past the army of men with guns?"

"Yeah, actually. I'm surprisingly good at it."

"Well, I want to get out of here alive and some of us actually make plans, Doctor. We don't just show up with nothing more than a clean suit and a handful of dust and hope for the best."

What did that mean? That Doctor turned to look at the Prowler questioningly and received a smug look in return.

"What's your plan?"

"Someone might be listening."

Of course.

"Why did you stop my swarm?  _How_  did you stop it?"

"I asked."

"And I'm supposed to believe that?" he snapped irritably.

"I asked  _nicely_ ," the Prowler snapped back. "What do you want me to say? I just told you we can't talk about this. Just trust me, okay?"

"Why?"

"Why should we trust  _you_!?"

"Oh, would you two just shut up!" the Mechanic barked angrily. "Every five seconds the two of you are arguing and you never get anywhere so just shut up!"

"The Doctor is here to help us, Prowler," Sevil added in a soothing voice. "And I think you need to remember that we are together in this, Doctor. Brody made you one of us. That makes us your teammates, not your followers. I, too, have many questions but now is not the time to ask them. Right now, you need to worry about taking care of your patient."

The Doctor found himself wanting to argue with Sevil and quickly realized that there was no point. He was moody and aggressive because he didn't like people holding back information. Brody's blood had surely been taken but the Prowler did not seem worried. He supposed that meant that, whatever the plan was, it was meant to come to life very soon. He supposed, if he didn't like what the Prowler was doing, he could just take Boris and the other prisoners and find his own way out.

Yes, no point in arguing. No point in discussing plans. Anyone could be listening. Instead he sighed, ran his hands through his hair, and gazed across at those brown eyes full of passion.

"Can your sister really beat you in an arm wrestle?"

"Hey, she's freakishly strong, alright?"

An hour passed, and Brody regained consciousness for a little while. The Doctor explained what happened, asked a few routine questions, and then let the Maybe-Prince go back to sleep. Another hour passed, and the Prowler began to pace, putting his face to the bars to try to look down the hall and sometimes putting his ear against the wall. Waiting.

Before the third hour came, soldiers arrived. Eight of them, armed and armoured, came to the Doctor's cell door. He was certain they had come for Brody and his eyes quickly began scanning the soldiers for weak points or details that he could use to his advantage. But the bars slid across and no eyes turned to Brody. He found every set fixed on himself.

"Our Lady would like a word with you," the soldier said gruffly, and the Doctor found himself looking down the barrel of a gun.

"I think I'm fine, thanks," he answered with as much of a smile as he could muster. "It's been a bit of a long day really. Tell her I might call her in the morning though."

"You move, or we start shooting prisoners," the soldier answered, and the gun turned and pointed at Sevil instead. "And those are her orders, not mine."

His eyes moved to find the Prowler and his hearts sank at the sight of a pale face looking back at him. No plan for this then? With a sigh he stepped forward, trying to ignore the bruises that made every movement ache and trying to keep as much dignity as he could. As the soldiers marched him away, he got one last look at the Prowler and saw his lips moving.

It was hard to tell from the distance, but he could have sworn the Prowler mouthed the words " _He's coming_ ".


	68. Donna

Donna felt a bit like she was going to be sick. Harry had parked the TARDIS in space a distance away from Kahlia's ship so they could get a good look. Whoever it was that had warned them of the coming armies had not been lying. In the distance there were shadows, and they were coming.

They were all checking and rechecking their gear—making sure the shields and cloaks were working. Jack had given her a gun, but it felt entirely wrong to be holding it. The Doctor would throw a hissy fit if he knew.

Grandad was still arguing with Harry, not happy about being left behind. She didn't feel bad for him at all. She was going, and she felt terrified. She was kitted up in all this gear with no idea how any of it worked with a gun on her hip that she prayed she would not have to use and the intention of sneaking onto a ship full of very dangerous people.

It was best that Grandad stayed behind. Harry gave him all sorts of excuses—someone needed to move the TARDIS back to a safe place once they'd gotten out and to be on board in case they received another message from the Star. Harry wouldn't say it, but everyone knew what was really going on. Good old Gramps had been there for Harry when even the Doctor wasn't and was also the least likely to make it through the mission unharmed. Harry simply couldn't bear the thought of anything happening to him.

Everyone had a wrist strap with the controls of their shields on it along with a small hand mirror. Any time the alloy cloaks were activated, communicators or radios wouldn't work for communicating between them, so Harry insisted on mirrors. The Doctor had shown her the girl in the mirror before, but it was still a bit difficult to wrap her head around the fact that that was truly how she lived. The girl, who was referred to only as the Daughter, happily agreed to serve as communicator. Whatever past crimes she was being held for seemed long forgotten and her loyalty was with the Doctor now. She wanted to do her part.

Ghanje had come to join the fight as well, whether they wanted him or not it seemed. A strange ball of blue light hovered around Harry as they prepared to leave, and she could tell by Harry's eyes that the two had been silently communicating for a while now.

"There they are," Jack announced, pointing up at the console's screen. "Ginu'un Thunderbirds. And there, those are ships from Godforge."

"Looks like our saviour is here," Harry muttered quietly.

It only took a few more seconds for Kahlia's ship to notice it was under attack. The TARDIS's sensors went berserk, alerting them to shields going up and the preparation of weapons. Harry very quickly went over what controls to use with Grandad and then suddenly they were flying.

She could feel her heart beating up in her throat, every muscle tensing up. This was it. Shaun was squeezing her hand, his other hand drumming its fingers nervously on the top of the enormous plasma cannon hanging next to his hip. Grandad gave them all a salute with watery eyes which everyone returned with incredibly forced smiles. Her fingers tensed around the small blaster she'd been given, Shaun clutched his cannon, Jack carried pistols with silencers that shot good old-fashioned bullets, while Harry had a sawn-off shotgun strapped to his back and a series of blades on his belt.

"This isn't a game," Harry warned them, clutching the knife the Doctor had given him. "These men will kill you."

And suddenly the doors were open, and her feet were moving without her. She half expected to step into a battlefield, though she knew that the battle had not yet started. There were soldiers in the hallway before them, minding their own business, and suddenly they were on the ground.

Harry and Jack had not hesitated in the slightest, taking all three of the soldiers down before anyone knew what was happening. She blinked and felt like she had missed it. She didn't even know if the soldiers were dead or not. She felt numb and paralyzed, but her feet moved anyway.

Harry lifted his arm to look down at the mirror on his wrist strap. "Find him."

While the Daughter ran through the mirrors of the ship, Ghanje flew ahead of them. The ball of light raced down the hall and around corners to scout while the TARDIS wailed and vanished behind them.

"What do we do until she finds him?" Donna asked, her eyes spying the new streak of red across Harry's knife.

The question was irrelevant. The Daughter returned within seconds and they were moving again. Gunshots went off ahead of them and the air filled with the hollow, phantom war cry of Ghanje. There were only a few seconds of silence before the distinct thudding sound of one body hitting the floor after another.

"He's good," Harry said with a smirk. "Let's go."

The ship was alive with noise. Alarms were going off everywhere and Donna could hear hundreds of boots thundering through hallways that were a little too close for comfort. Harry kept reminding them to avoid gunshots if they could, needing to remain as quiet as possible so as not to announce themselves. They all knew that they had a very small window before the entire ship was alerted to their presence, but they hoped to at least find the Doctor before that happened. In the meantime, she and Shaun primarily relied on Harry's blades and Jack's silenced guns to get them there alive.

Ghanje kept ahead of them until Harry had to call him back, saying that he was causing too much of a stir. The light throbbed and moved in such an agitated manner that Donna suspected he was enjoying this. Was he that protective of the Doctor or was he just that eager for a fight?

The ship's sound system crackled to life and she expected to hear either instructions or a warning for the soldiers but, instead, she heard a panicked voice. "Jack," a male voice said quickly. "Plan B!"

Everyone's eyes turned to Jack, who looked just as surprised as they did. "I have no idea who that is," he said quickly. "Jack isn't exactly an uncommon name."

Harry looked Jack up and down suspiciously. "Whatever," he muttered after a moment. "We knew we weren't coming here alone anyway."

Harry had said they needed to find a guard's post so that they could get into the computer and find out where they were holding the Doctor. They had hoped that, with all the commotion over the approaching armies, the majority of the guards would have left for battle stations, but it seemed they were going to have to do it the hard way today. They turned a corner and saw a console embedded into the wall down the end, with half a dozen guards surrounding it.

"Nobody fire," Harry muttered quietly. "You might hit the console."

Instead they all double-checked that their shields were on and followed Harry's lead. While the guards had their backs turned, facing the console and figuring out where to go, the group hurried up behind them. They surely must have heard the footsteps but none of them bothered to look up until they were nearly on them.

Harry rammed the soldier nearest to him—the shield hitting like a wall and sending him flying into the others. Jack followed and rammed another. The soldiers started shooting but their bullets either stopped dead against the shield or ricocheted back.

Shaun leapt on the console while Donna kept her eyes down the hallway in case more soldiers were coming and tried not to hear the painful shouts or the snapping of bones. Shaun used the Doctor's screwdriver to get past the console's security systems and furiously set to work.

The soldiers' screaming began to quiet and become strangled. Donna turned her head to see that Ghanje had jumped in to finish the fight. Harry and Jack's shields had the group pinned against a wall with nowhere to go and Ghanje had come in from the top, his light filling the air around them and appearing to be entering their mouths, choking the life right out of them. It only took a minute for silence to fall and the soldiers slumped down against each other, falling to the floor in a heap the moment Jack stepped away.

"Shaun?" Harry's voice had changed to one that was surprisingly cold. It worried her. They'd taken a man with a history of violent and homicidal mental illness and thrown him into a war. Would he still be Harry when all of this was over?

"We're on the wrong floor," Shaun answered quickly, punching a few more buttons on the console. "Follow me."

Shaun tossed Donna the sonic screwdriver, pulled his cannon forward, armed and ready, and took off running. The stairs weren't far, and Shaun led them down several flights. When he pushed the door open on the right floor there was a group of soldiers on the other side. She saw the panic rise in Shaun’s eyes and his immediate reaction was to pull the trigger on his cannon. The sound from the thing was not as loud as she expected, but enough to hurt her ears, and the recoil was enough to send Shaun back a couple of steps. And just like that the soldiers were gone.

"What did I do?" Shaun asked in complete shock at the sight before him. "Oh my God, what did I do?"

"You survived," Harry answered quietly and pushed past him through the door.

The hallway was slick with a deep red, visceral layer and scraps of leather and metal were scattered across it. Donna took Shaun's hand and they both tried to keep their stomachs from flipping over as they carefully crossed it, while Jack and Harry marched through it as though there were nothing there. She didn't have the heart to tell Shaun that there was blood in his hair.

"People will have heard that," Jack said, reaching back to grab Shaun by the arm and pull him forward. "If we're lucky, we have a couple of minutes before someone finds that and raises the alarm for a man hunt. We need to move."

"Right." Shaun swallowed hard and quickened his pace.

They only made it past two more intersections before someone came charging around the corner and nearly ran right into them. There were some startled shouts, some very unexpected and fast movements, and suddenly Shaun was standing with the rigid stance of someone with a gun pressed against their spine with a pair of yellow eyes peering over his shoulder.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" shouted the person hiding behind Shaun's body, using her husband as a human shield against the many weapons now pointed at them. "Nobody shoot! I came with the Star!"

"You've just attacked us and taken one of our men hostage," Jack answered calmly—a calm Donna couldn't understand when the pistol in her own hand was shaking so badly. Then she remembered that they still had Ghanje and that the light was slowly circling around.

"I know," the man answered back, sounding a little frightened. "I didn't hear you coming until you were too close for me to get away and I didn't want you to just shoot first and ask questions later. I'm on a rescue mission, just like you. The Star sent me. We're allies. Can I let your boy go now so we can talk?"

"Yes!" Donna blurted suddenly. "Yes, let him go!"

Shaun was gently pushed forward, and he hurried over to Donna's side. It turned out the man had not had to crouch to hide behind Shaun, as he could not have been more than an inch or two over five feet. He was slender with bronze skin, black dots speckled his cheeks, his hair a shoulder length mess of dark curls, and bright golden eyes that stared with nervous anticipation. Most of all she noticed his teeth—two enormous, thick fangs stretched past his lips and reached half way down his chin. She'd heard the Doctor speak of people who were similar to cats but this man reminded her more of a lion.

"What's your name?" Harry asked quickly, being sure to keep his shotgun carefully pointed at the new face.

"Jack. Jack Nista," the young man answered, with his golden eyes flicking between them all. "Plan B Jack. I'm sure you heard that."

"Who was calling you?"

"My friend," Nista answered, his eyes now glancing down the hallways. "I told you. I was sent by the Star. We're on a rescue mission—basically, get the Doctor and the other prisoners out before the shit really hits the fan. My friend let himself get taken as a prisoner a while ago and we've just been waiting for the army to show up, so we have a chance to get out. But hey, uh . . ." He cracked an awkward smile and pointed at Harry's chest. "Sorry, but there isn't any chance that's a tumour or something, is it?"

"What's in the bag?" Jack asked, gesturing at the backpack Nista had strapped to him.

"Weapons, shields, medical supplies," Nista answered quickly, taking the pack off and tossing it at Jack's feet. "Look through it if you want but we need to get moving here guys."

Jack took a peek in the bag before handing it back, seemingly satisfied, but Harry did not look completely convinced. "I can't read your thoughts," he growled.

"We're on the Nightmare's ship," Nista answered, looking at Harry as though he were stupid. "Why the hell would I come here without the proper equipment? Listen, I know you've got your trust issues or whatever but we're both here to do the same thing. So, do you want to help me save the Doctor or do you want to stand aside and let me take care of it myself? Either way, it's time to go."

Nista took off at a run. They all hesitated a moment, watching Harry for a sign on what they should do. His brows were locked together, his jaw shifted in an irritated way, and he quickly pulled Shaun's calming device from his pocket and looped it around his neck.

"Son of a bitch," he grumbled and, with a frustrated growl, took off running.

Nista was fast despite his height and quickly proved that the wild look about him was not just cosmetics. They saw a pair of soldiers turn the corner into their hallway ahead of them and Nista reacted without hesitation. He dropped to the floor so that he slid the last couple of feet towards them and kicked viciously to take out their knees before they even knew what had happened. By the time their group had caught up, one soldier had already had his throat clawed out and Nista was using his hands to push against the second soldier's chest, freeing his lengthy teeth from the man's flesh.

When Nista glanced up at them and saw the surprised looks, he simply wiped the blood away from his mouth. "On my planet, my species is third on the food chain and we've got tribal feuds that have lasted centuries. You've gotta do what you've gotta do, savvy?"

"You'll get no arguments from me," Harry answered quietly.

They ran again, and Donna still felt like she wasn't entirely there. She felt like she was dreaming, and it was some other, braver, madder Donna who was running through all of this.

When they reached the prison holds, they were faced with a sight that none of them had expected. She heard whispered curse words escape the mouths of every man around her as she took in what was happening.

All the cells looked like they had been ripped open—bars and doors just lying on the floor as though they had been torn right off the hinges. An enormous crowd of soldiers were pushing and shouting and fighting against what seemed like an invisible wall, some of them even shooting. All of them were far too busy with the struggle to notice the small group that had appeared.

In the center of the madness were four people crowded together and clutching each other tightly. Their mouths were moving in unison, but she didn't hear any words escaping from them, and suddenly the whole group would move together and whatever was protecting them would ram into the soldiers. Somehow, they were stuck together in some kind of barrier and their only defense apparently was to try and push their way out.

"We don't know how strong that shield is, Shaun," Harry said quietly, placing his hand on Shaun's shoulder as if to hold him back. "I don't want you firing that cannon as long as they're in there."

Shaun nodded quickly and let the cannon drop back at his side, clearly relieved. Harry nudged Jack's arm, then Nista's, and nodded his head towards Ghanje. Harry pulled his shotgun from his side, pointed it at the crowd of soldiers, and fired. Without another second lost, the four of them pounced and began to tear away at the surprised soldiers.

Donna tried not to think about what was happening and instead decided to focus on the people they were saving. Her eyes turned to the prisoners trapped inside the barrier and only realized for the first time that the Doctor was not with them. What if he was already dead?

Then she saw it. A man in the crowd, shouting at them without a voice. With all the death and chaos around them, a pair of brown eyes had found hers and were desperately trying to get her attention. He waved and shouted and within seconds the others had joined in—all of them mouthing the same words and all of them pointing in the same direction.

_Save him._

Her eyes quickly followed the directions of their fingers and her heart skipped a beat. There was a door just a few feet away. They were all pointing at that door and crying out the same words— _save him_.

She didn't even think before she pushed Shaun aside and burst through the door. She didn't even think when her hand immediately lifted the gun. She saw the blood on the floor, the purple on the Doctor's skin, the pain on his face and she didn't even think before she pulled the trigger.

The Doctor jumped and screamed horridly at the sound. The man who had been cutting away at her beloved Doctor only stared at her for the briefest moment before the knife slipped out of his hand and clattered to the floor. For the first time since they had arrived on that ship, she understood the looks on Harry and Jack's faces. She understood how someone could look so very satisfied to see someone die.

Not even a flutter of pity whispered in her heart when that man hit the ground.

The Doctor had been completely strapped to the chair he sat in. His eyes were clamped firmly shut even now and his breathing was completely erratic. His head was bleeding freely down the side of his face and she remembered the day she found a Doctor in the TARDIS who didn't belong with a gash in his forehead.

"Doctor, it's okay," she said quickly as she and Shaun set to work on the straps. "We're getting you out of here. It's me. It's Donna. Harry's here too. We're gonna take you home."

She expected him to look relieved or else, at the very least, open his eyes. While they feverishly unbuckled straps and freed limbs, the Doctor kept his eyes and mouth stubbornly shut. It wasn't until she went to unbuckle the strap bounding the Doctor's wrist that she realized what she had walked in on.

There was blood all down the armrest of the chair, reaching all the way to the floor and pooling there. In that pool laid two of the Doctor's fingers, dropped and forgotten as though they were nothing. She could clearly see the beginning cuts in his third finger and remembered once more the feeling of satisfaction when that soldier fell.

"No problem," Shaun muttered quietly when he followed her eyes. "It's still fresh. We can fix that. Er, here." He picked up the severed fingers and quickly shoved them into the Doctor's shirt pocket. "Keep them safe in there for now."

"Why won't you open your eyes?" Donna asked him, allowing Shaun to finish with the buckles as she put a hand on either side of the Doctor's face. "Doctor, look at me! Why won't he look at me?"

Even the limbs that had been freed did not move. The Doctor stayed firm in his seat, his uninjured hand gripping the armrest as though he thought he might float away. He simply would not respond to her—not her voice or her touch.

"Don't you want to see Harry?" she persisted. "And the baby? Don't you want to talk to the baby? They've both missed you so much, Doctor."

"It's Kahlia," Shaun said quietly, pausing to look up at the Doctor's face. "They've told us what she does—the nightmares."

"What are you talking about?" she demanded. "Shaun, what do you mean?"

"It's like one of Harry's attacks," Shaun explained. "They've been torturing him with nightmares. He's trying to ignore us. He doesn't think we're real."

"What? Don't be stupid." She felt her voice trying to get away from her and her hands gently slapped against the Doctor's cheeks. "Doctor, it's us. It's Donna! I'm right here. I'm real!"

But she remembered seeing Berran through Harry's eyes. She remembered that not a hair looked out of place, that his eyes held everything she would expect to see in a living person, that his hand had been warm when it touched her. There not a single thing about that child that told her he wasn't really there.

"We caused the eruption at Pompeii," Donna blurted quickly. "The both of us. I put my hand on the controls with you and together we caused the eruption."

Kahlia wouldn't know that. She couldn't possibly know that. And if Kahlia didn't know, then a projection caused by her wouldn't know.

"Uh, Harvey Wallbanger! Remember that? Harvey Wallbanger and Camp Town Races and salt being too salty," she even lifted her hands and mimicked the movement the Doctor had used on that day when he was trying to gesture 'shock'. "Oh, you're rubbish at charades anyway! Oh, uh . . . Bad Wolf! Rose told me to tell you that, remember? Just two words and you just about wet yourself."

His brows had softened a bit now, a look of hope just flickering in that pained expression. How long had he been in here? How long had they been filling his mind with horrors before some fool with a knife had been allowed to take over?

"River Song," she whispered. That timeline didn't exist anymore according to Harry and the Doctor. It changed that day the Doctor took the Master on board the TARDIS and patched him up. Whatever was meant to happen between the Doctor and River Song would never happen now and that meant that the events at the library never actually occurred. Kahlia couldn't possibly know about River Song when that reality no longer existed.

"I met Professor River Song," she continued carefully. "And she loved you, Doctor. Maybe even as much as Harry does. And even though you didn't know her, I saw how hurt you were."

And just like that, in a moment that felt like she had brought someone back from the dead, the Doctor opened his eyes. She felt the tears spill forth when he whispered her name and she didn't care to stop them. She flung her arms around his neck, apologized profusely when she heard him grunt in pain, and sobbed rather ungraciously when he wrapped his arms around her anyway.

She felt Shaun's hand land on her back and heard him suggest that she let the Doctor up, but she ignored him for the moment. She was devastated to see the Doctor in such a state and she knew him well enough to know that he still hoped to preserve some dignity. He held her tightly, despite the bleeding and the bruises, partly out of relief and happiness but also to hide his face. He needed a moment, she knew, to let go of everything he had just experienced and prepare himself for the next step.

He didn't need long and, the second she felt his grip loosen, she let go. His cheeks looked a bit red and his eyes a bit watery, but it didn't stand out too much when he had that much blood on his face.

"Hi, Shaun," he croaked.

"Hello, Doctor," Shaun answered with a kind smile. "Let's just get this wrapped up real quick and then we can go."

The noise outside was subsiding and she could still clearly hear both Harry and Jack's voices. They were okay and now the Doctor would be too. Shaun pulled a roll of bandage cloth from his pocket and quickly wrapped it around the Doctor's mangled hand while Donna quickly explained what had happened since they got on the ship. The Doctor mentioned that, the moment the armies arrived, Kahlia fled from his mind to deal with the situation and ordered someone else to hurt him instead. They were convinced that the approaching armies had been the Doctor's plan and had been trying to get information from him when the soldier got the bright idea to start cutting off fingers.

But none of that mattered. They helped the Doctor to his feet and across the room. Shaun peeked through the door and they had to wait another moment or two before it was safe. She heard one last solid thud and Shaun pulled the door open. The Doctor moved on his own, abandoning her support in his eagerness to get through the door.

She watched his face carefully, thrilled to see the kind of happiness in it she hadn't seen for a long time. She remembered his face that day when he was finally reunited with Rose and knew that this one would be so much better to see.

His eyes, through the old layer of tears, lit up with the purest joy. His body forgot all its pains as his feet carried him forward. She watched as Harry turned back to see what the new sound was, wiping sweat and blood from his brow, and his face changed in just the same way.

All that brutality and savagery she had seen in Harry today melted away in a split second. The hard lines of his brow vanished and the cruelty in his eyes gave way to shock and happy tears. He showed no regard for the blades that fell to the floor when he opened his arms and stepped towards them. The Doctor flew into those arms with such force that he nearly knocked Harry right over.

As she watched them embracing each other in the way that people only do when they love so much it hurts, she felt Shaun's arm slide around her shoulders and she slid hers around his waist.

Harry's hand was running through the Doctor's hair, his lips moving in whispered words from their homeland. When she watched closely enough, she could see that the Doctor was shaking a little and realized that Harry was doing exactly what she had just moments before.

She tightened her grip on Shaun and felt that other, braver, madder Donna step forward into the light. The old frightened and shocked Donna was put to rest for now.

She loved these people. All of them. And whatever she had to do, she was getting them all out alive.


	69. The Doctor

The Doctor saw Jack react to Harry's facial expression alone. They turned to look at the small group of people they had just saved, Harry's eyes hardened, and suddenly Jack had a gun pointed at the Prowler's face. Shaun looked like he internally panicked for a second and simply gripped the cannon on his hip in case he was asked to use it, eyes darting between Harry and Jack, trying to guess what was happening.

"What the hell are you doing?" Donna barked. "You just tore this place apart trying to help these people and now you're pointing guns at 'em?"

No one spoke. Harry stared down a rather shocked looking Prowler and Jack kept his finger on the trigger.

"Harry," the Doctor muttered quietly after a moment of tense silence had passed. "What's going on?"

"We don't have time for this," said a little Alreesh man, fresh blood dripping from his fangs—Donna had mentioned a man named Nista that had joined them. "Seriously, if you've got a problem just say something. We can't stand around while you play your fucking tell-me-first game."

"He's right," Jack added, shifting with uncertainty. "Am I shooting this guy or what?"

"Whoa!" Nista shouted. "What in the—What's wrong with you? Nobody's shooting anyone!"

"What were you doing with the TARDIS?" Harry demanded, his eyes not moving away from the Prowler's.

"I don't know what you're talking about," the Prowler answered quickly, though the Doctor noticed that all the aggression and defiance that he usually saw had simply deflated from him. He couldn't even hold eye contact with Harry.

"Don't bullshit me, kid," Harry answered with a growl, and Jack took a tiny step closer just to remind the Prowler that a gun was aimed at him. "I saw you. We all saw you."

"Oh yeah," he heard Donna whisper, and turned to see her eyes trained on the Prowler's face. "You're that bloke—the good looking one by the TARDIS."

"The what?" Shaun asked, raising an eyebrow.

And when the Doctor looked into the Prowler's eyes, he realized why there was a look of defeat. A moment of lost control, a moment to simply brag and try to put the Doctor in his place, had taken away the Prowler's chance to lie. He could have pointed out that they were time travellers and that they might be meeting in the wrong order if he hadn't felt the need to point out that the Doctor had forgotten something as important as a past meeting between them.

The Doctor looked at the Prowler's face, at the details and features that had been nagging him with their familiarity. His mind fit the pieces together, imagining the lights that had danced over his skin and replaced the nervous expression with a sly grin.

The first words. "Sorry, mate," the Doctor found himself muttering. "Wrong door."

"Exactly," Harry agreed. "Now tell me, right now, what you were doing with the TARDIS and why you're here now, or I'll have Jack here shoot you where you stand."

"Guys, guys, listen," Nista said quickly, nervously wiping the blood away from his mouth as he spoke. "He's with me, alright? We're with the Star's army on a rescue mission to save the Doctor. The plans for this mission have been in the works for a  _very_  long time and there was a bit of jumping around in time to make sure we were here when we needed to be. Even with all that planning there are  _still_  some nasty surprises.” He gestured towards the considerable mass on Harry's chest and shook his head. "I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but it sure as hell looks like this man is pregnant—"

"That's enough," Harry interrupted. "Who is the Star?"

"A friend," the Prowler answered. "You'll meet him once we get out of here. I'm sorry but we can't tell you anything more than that."

"Why plan a rescue so far in advance when you could just prevent the Doctor's capture?"

"We tried," Nista responded. "The battle of Godforge was not just for the colony. The Star pushed all the way to the Nightmare herself and took her down. She escaped while she was regenerating and we couldn’t catch her after that. This was the next option."

The Doctor heard a faint whisper of a voice and Harry glanced down at a small mirror he had attached to a strap around his wrist. "We need to go. As soon as we get somewhere safe, you two are telling me everything you know. Everything."

"Yes, sir," both the Prowler and Nista answered together.

"Nista, give out your gear quickly and let's go." Harry turned and met the Doctor's eyes again. He could see the suspicion swimming in those eyes but they both knew that right now was the time for a leap of faith.

While Nista searched through his pack, handing out pistols, Harry took a brief moment to connect. Harry's hand moved to touch the Doctor's cheek and he welcomed the warm feeling of the other Time Lord's mind reaching out to mingle with his own. There were no words—only the terrible ache of missing someone and the greatest sense of relief. They were together. Together and alive. That was all that mattered.

"We need to get to the fourth floor loading dock," the Prowler said quickly. "You can't bring the TARDIS here because the Nightmare could get her hands on it and the Ginu'un fleet would probably assume it was some kind of weapon and blow it sky high anyway. A ship from Godforge will be docking there, waiting for us."

"We get on board and they'll have teleports to get everyone home," Nista finished, pulling out a pair of what looked like bundled rods from his pack. "Then we'll come back to deal with the Nightmare." He tossed one bundle to the Prowler and they each unfolded a rod, held it gingerly by the end, and pushed a small button located on the tip. In a second, the rods all unfolded themselves and snapped perfectly into a long black staff, each complete with a thin blade running along the fighting end.

The Doctor was thankful when Sevil found her way to his side and placed a hand on his shoulder, immediately working to ease some of his pain. "I knew there was something wrong with his story," she muttered in his ear. "After you pointed out all those things, I knew he was full of it. Everything you said made sense except the part about him being sent for Brody."

He frowned a little, his eyes turning to look at a rather pale Brody accepting a weapon from Nista. "Why not?"

She smiled at him. "Because the royal family sent  _me_  to rescue him," she whispered. "Obviously, things didn't go according to plan, but they had expected that. Yesterday was the deadline for either one of us to show up alive before they sent the fleet."

The Doctor had no idea how fast the group had been moving when they first arrived, but he was sure it was much faster than this. Brody was working hard to tough it out and was actually doing rather well, despite looking so ill from his blood loss. But the Doctor's own legs weren't cooperating. They were bruised and damaged and so very painful, his hand was throbbing furiously, and he was beginning to feel a bit light-headed from the combination of his many injuries and sheer exhaustion.

Harry was careful to stay at his side and the Doctor was certain that he'd be holding his hand and pulling him along if there wasn't a need to hold on to weapons. There were no words shared, but he occasionally felt a tendril of comforting thoughts being sent towards him.

He noted that, other than himself, the Mechanic was the only one not carrying a weapon. The Prowler hissed at her that she was a fool and a coward, but she stubbornly refused. The Doctor had been spared such scolding because his right hand was damaged and cradled against his chest, though he also got the very clear impression that the Prowler was absolutely terrified of Harry.

As they hurried along, he found himself wondering about the Prowler's shield. Quite suddenly it seemed to be inactive. He hadn't seen a single person bump into or bounce off of it since they began. When they ran into the first batch of soldiers, he watched carefully. The Prowler's shield knocked soldiers aside like paper dolls in the wind, while the rest of their group seemed completely oblivious to it.

He decided to push forward and reach out for the Prowler's shield. As expected, his fingers met something solid and could move no further. He watched Jack manage to get nearly shoulder to shoulder with the Prowler, when a guard could not get within three feet. Finally, he saw Harry get too close. He watched his body bump against the invisible wall and his head whip around to see what it was.

It must have been preprogrammed to respond to certain people, he decided. If the Prowler had really been a part of some secret mission, then he must have programmed the shield against whoever he knew would be there. But even that didn't really satisfy him. It just didn't feel right.

Harry wielded his knives beautifully, Jack shot with precision, the Prowler simultaneously beat and sliced open men with his staff, while Nista seemed to regularly forsake all weapons after a minute of fighting and tossed them aside. The Alreesh leapt onto the closest soldier and let his teeth sink in to the man's neck.

The others stood back and out of the way. Shaun was carefully watching the hallway behind them, nervously gripping and re-gripping his cannon. Sevil fretted over Brody, who still looked rather dreadful despite his best attempts to appear otherwise.

"I said the Star would come," he heard the Mechanic say softly.

"I don't see a Star anywhere," the Doctor growled back before he could stop himself. "I see men risking their lives to save ours."

Ghanje soared over their heads with a howling fury and disappeared down the hall ahead of them. While Harry and the others finished with the group of soldiers before them, they could clearly hear the energy cloud dealing with the next. By the time they reached that hallway, it was already littered with four dead men.

As they passed over them, the Prowler stopped to retrieve a gun from one of the bodies and pushed it forcibly into the Mechanic's hands. "You wanna live?" he barked at her. "Fight for it."

"Do as he says," Harry added gruffly and the Doctor could see a clear glint of approval in those brown eyes.

They passed three more groups of soldiers, one man of which the Mechanic actually killed on her own, before running into a group of men clad in the sacred armour of the Haephsian Sun. One of the priests actually struck first, swinging a war axe at Jack and hitting him cleanly in the chest. While the others began shouting in fear and horror, the Doctor rushed forward to join Harry in trying to get a few words out.

"Stop! Stop!" they shouted over the noise, while Jack gurgled and twitched on the floor. "We're with the Star!"

The priest said something in return, but it was far too noisy to hear. "Everyone shut up!" Harry roared, turning his eyes on the others in the group.

The Doctor bent down to yank the axe free from Jack's body and handed it back to the priest. "He'll be fine," he muttered with a shrug of his shoulders.

"I'm Harold Mott," Harry said quickly. "This is John Noble, Jack Harkness, Shaun Temple, Donna No—"

"Temple-Noble," Donna interrupted, quickly lifting her hand to flash her ring. "Married now."

Harry actually stopped long enough to look back at her with an expression of pure loathing.

"I'm just saying!" she protested.

"Time Lords change their faces," one of the priests argued, raising a frightfully large blaster at them. "You could be anyone."

"They are liars," another priest added in quickly. "The Star has secured the prisoners by now, so these can't be them. If we lead them back to the ship, they'll likely sabotage us."

A cry of fear escaped most mouths when the rest of the priests seemed to agree, and all lifted their weapons, prepared to attack.

"Hold it!" Harry roared. "I have the knife that saved the Star on Earth!"

The priest near the front lowered his weapon slightly and eyed Harry with suspicion. "It was not a knife."

"No, but it was a diamond taken from the knife," Harry explained quickly, holding the knife out for inspection. "An Astrosteel blade forged in the heart of the sun itself. It had a red Star Egg in the handle that was used to divert a laser drill, saving the Planet Earth and the Star with it. I know you'll know it. Look closely and tell me that's not the knife you've heard about."

There was a moment in which the priests' eyes swapped between the knife and their faces. Suddenly Jack's eyes flew open and he gasped loudly for air, causing everyone who didn't expect it to nearly jump out of their skin with fright.

"It's them," one of the priests confirmed, staring at Jack in disbelief. "That is the blade from which the Egg was taken. The Star must be headed directly for the Nightmare. Let's get these men to the ship. Be sure to keep that blade ready for inspection; we can't be too careful with all the trickery from the Nightmare."

For a moment, just one shining moment, the Doctor thought they might have really escaped the worst. His mind chose to ignore the fact that Harry would never leave Kahlia to fall or conquer a faceless ally and instead chose to believe that within a few moments they could be home and safe. He chose to forget what had happened a year ago—the grim start to one of the happiest days of his life.

He saw it all happening before his eyes and yet it seemed impossible to do anything but try not to see it and simply let it unfold.

They could see the great battle between the Order of the Haephsian Sun and the Nightmare's men at the gates of the dock. He saw the soldiers trying to activate a force field that would seal the hall. He saw the Prowler reach for his belt, pull out a small controller of some sort, and deactivate his own shield. He saw Boris fly forth from the Prowler's shadow, to eat away the force field's foundation hubs before it was activated. He saw the priests leading the charge into the fight, and everyone followed without question.

Men dissolved into nothing as Boris tore through them, hit by the bullets thrown at them by Ghanje, fall to the shards of glass that flew through the air as every single reflective surface shook and shattered as the Daughter unleashed her fury. Nista and the Prowler struck blow after blow until the Alreesh once again lost himself to the battle and threw aside his staff to hunt. Jack shot with calm and expertise, while Donna and the Mechanic did so haltingly and rather ineffectively. Sevil dropped her gun and picked up Nista's staff, proving herself to be surprisingly skilled with it and moving naturally in time with Harry's blades to cover each other. Shaun charged ahead to face the group of Kahlia's soldiers that seemed to be gaining control of the Godforge ship and turned his cannon on them, turning them to little more than red mist and scraps within seconds.

Brody tried, but he was growing weaker by the second. As the Doctor struggled just to keep himself upright, helping Brody was far more challenging.

He could see what was going wrong as it was happening, but he couldn't move fast enough, and no one could hear him over the sound of so much death. There was one of the Nightmare's soldiers crouched against a wall and furiously working on a small device in his hands. He spotted a foundation hub for a force field built into the wall just ahead of them and realized they were about to be sealed off.

The soldiers were almost cleared ahead of them. If they could just get past the hubs before the force field was activated, they could make it. But a sound like thunder came from behind and it was clear that the Nightmare's soldiers were descending upon them.

He saw Sevil look back with fear in her eyes, saw the way she looked at the weak and stumbling Brody, and knew that this would be how a clear shot at an escape would go wrong. Sevil ran back towards them, to attack the soldiers that were swiftly approaching, to save Brody's life.

The Doctor called out, trying to tell her not to go, but she didn't hear him. They just passed the hubs when the Prowler looked up to see what was happening.

"Help Sevil!" Brody shouted and somehow the Prowler understood despite all the noise.

The Doctor shouted desperately for him to stop, but no one was listening. Now he saw Shaun's eyes trained on the horde behind them and saw them set with determination. He charged towards them, gripping his cannon, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the Doctor was trying to get his attention.

They were all too busy fighting. The Doctor’s only chance was to reach the soldier with the controls himself. He ran as hard as his legs would allow with Brody relying on him so heavily. They passed each of their friends, battling the last of the Nightmare's soldiers on this side of what would soon be a solid wall of energy.

Even over all the noise, the Doctor heard Sevil scream—a horrible scream that told him she would not be coming back. He glanced over his shoulder to see her writhing on the ground while Shaun and the Prowler ran to catch up. Shaun stopped to raise his cannon, firing it into the crowd of soldiers and eliminating five with a single blast. He saw the Prowler reach and try to lift Sevil into his arms but failing to do so as he fought off the few soldiers still brave enough to charge forward.

He felt like everything was happening in slow motion and it was infuriating that he simply couldn't move faster. As Sevil's screams filled his ears, he muttered a quick word of apology and let Brody drop to the ground. It was still hard to run but he could at least move faster.

The soldier with the control was wounded badly and bleeding quite freely. This man had already accepted that he was going to die and was trying to gain one last victory. The Doctor snatched the control from his hands and slammed his knee into the man's head, knocking him out for what he was sure would be the last time.

The controls had already been set and locked. The force field was going to activate. The Doctor furiously punched buttons and fought to delay it, earning precious seconds but finding it impossible to tell it to stop. He looked up and saw that Sevil and the Prowler were still on the wrong side of the hub, about to be trapped.

He saw Harry looking at him now. In the corner of his eye, as he tried desperately to reset the program and screamed for the Prowler to move, Harry had finally noticed him. The other Time Lord was running towards him when the Doctor watched with a sinking feeling as a shot flew through the air. The Prowler's surprised shout and Sevil's continued screams seemed to echo through a world where there was no other sound.

Shaun's cannon fired again, and walls were splashed with red so thickly now that it was clearly running down to the floor. He watched the Prowler's body hit the ground and heard his strangled screams join the tumultuous orchestra of violence. Nista released the man he had been tearing apart, letting the body fall with a wet thud, and his golden eyes widened in complete and utter shock.

The Doctor felt a stone fall in the pit of his stomach when Harry suddenly slowed. Those brown eyes took on that look that they so often did when they came to a realization and, worse, made a firm decision. His run slowed to a stop, his eyes glanced upward, and the Doctor knew that Harry could hear something that no one else could.

"Harry, don't!" he shouted.

But Harry simply looked at the Doctor, with a look of near defeat. "I'm sorry," he said simply before he turned and ran back towards the fight.

"We'll come back!" he shouted again. "Harry, we'll come back for them!  _Don't_!"

He tried again to stop the force field, desperate to prevent it from activating. But that wicked voice whispered in his mind that there was no stopping this. He had known all along that this rescue would not work. All he could think about now was if Wilfred had really seen them both alive that long year ago.

While he fought with the ever-defiant control, Nista remained frozen on the ground, the Mechanic had slung an unconscious Donna over her shoulder and was making a run for the ship, Jack was getting Brody back on his feet. He could not spot Boris nor Ghanje through the chaos and could only hope that they were somewhere close by. And Shaun stood alone with his cannon, holding back the enemy.

He saw Harry reach the Prowler and Sevil. He bent down by Sevil and, with a solemn expression, turned away from her. He could see Harry’s lips moving as he grabbed hold of the Prowler, an arm in each hand, and began dragging him. The controller was wailing at him now, refusing to follow any more of his direction and he looked up with dread to see Harry just barely making it across the safety line.

The force field switched on with a violent flash and a crashing sound like thunder—exactly what happens when a force field is activated with something already in its wall. He saw Harry's body fly backwards a few feet and hit the floor but didn't hear him scream.

"Harry!" he shouted at the top of his lungs.

The Prowler and Sevil were still trapped on the other side and the soldiers were closing in.

"Shaun, get Harry!"

Shaun was clever enough to know that there was nothing more to do now. He dropped the cannon to let it hang at his side and ran to Harry instead. Nista finally stumbled to his feet and the Doctor realized that it must have been more than surprise that kept him sitting there, judging by the blood and the loose flap of skin hanging from the side of his skull.

It was immediately clear that Harry had been seriously injured by the force field. His shirt was rapidly turning a dark, wet red and they were leaving a trail of blood as they hurried forward. Jack came running back out of the ship to help and the Doctor shouted at them to hurry.

Nista collapsed to the floor the moment they got through the door, and it looked as if Donna was just beginning to wake up. But the Doctor couldn't pay attention to them right now. He pulled at Harry's shirt to reveal that the force field had sliced right into his chest, nearly severing the denndi from him. The blood was pumping out freely and there were sounds escaping Harry’s mouth that sounded frightfully like he was choking on it. The Doctor was too afraid to even think about what might have happened to the baby.

"Stay awake," was all he could say, grabbing handfuls of bandaging cloth from the priests to press against the wound. "Stay awake. Just stay awake."

"Go back," Harry wheezed in return, grabbing desperately at the Doctor's arms and then trying to grab hold of Jack as well. "Go . . ."

"We will," he promised quickly. "We'll go back as soon as you're safe. Jack and I will go get them."

" _Now_ ," Harry persisted and a few blood drops spattered forth from his lips. "That woman . . . already dead . . ."

"I'm not leaving you like this!" the Doctor shouted back, then turned to look at the priests rushing about trying to help everyone. "Can somebody help us over here!?"

Harry's eyes turned away from him to gaze off into the distance. For one terrifying second, the Doctor thought he saw the light leaving them. The alternative wasn't much better.

Harry had spotted a small, round vortex manipulator hanging on the wall. Before the Doctor saw it or knew what was happening, Harry had snatched it, gripped the Doctor's arm, and squeezed it tight. The next thing he knew, he was kneeling on a floor, clutching Harry in his arms, and trying desperately to hold back the blood as it pooled around them.

"What have you done?" he whispered in disbelief, his eyes darting around the room and seeing nothing of any use. "Harry, what have you done?"

The Doctor picked up the manipulator and quickly realized that it was one fuelled by thought. You simply thought of where and when you wanted to go and squeezed. Of all the places in the universe, when there were hospitals out there that could heal entire planets at a time, Harry had chosen to drop them in a dusty old bedroom. Worse yet, the manipulator would require a few minutes to charge before it could be used again.

"I said we could go back," he found himself whispering, suddenly feeling overwhelmed with helplessness. "You idiot, why did you do that? What am I supposed to do with you here?"

The door before him opened and he looked up. He should have known really. He should have remembered this day. Still, he had never been more surprised or more relieved to see those old blue eyes staring down at him.

"Wilfred . . ."


	70. Kahlia

"Explain this to me."

That foolish little man quaked with fear before her and she hated him for it. So puny and pathetic. He couldn't look her in the eye, couldn't keep his shoulders straight. The man could barely speak. How disappointing.

Not long ago, Kahlia had the Doctor standing in that very same spot. Wounded, captive, and perfectly aware that there was a plan for his death and yet he showed no fear of her. She could still feel the sore spots on her throat where he had grabbed her, bruises that she had been trying to keep hidden from her men with some difficulty.

How could she be expected to withstand the company of cowering dogs when she had faced a dragon?

"It was that jittery one," the soldier explained carefully. "The one you named the Prowler. I don't know how he did it."

"Did  _what_?" she growled, quickly losing her patience. "You must first tell me  _what_  happened, then we can worry about  _how_."

"Yes, ma'am. Sorry, milady."

Vermin. No man who could claim to be a warrior would tremble so and call her milady.

"It happened after you left Officer Hukra to press the Doctor for information. The prisoners were rather calm up until then. Nervous—definitely high strung—but they weren't doing anything. Hukra came out and told us you were allowing him to do as he pleased as long as the Doctor could still speak." He stammered a little, his eyes focusing on the wall just behind her head instead of at her. "When he started screaming, that Prowler fellow jumped up. Next thing we know, he's got Yiaj by the neck—" he gestured with his hands twisting someone's head and breaking a neck. "Poor kid hadn't even finished his training."

That was interesting.

"How did he get out of the cell?"

"We don't know, milady."

"Then tell me what you  _do_  know!"

He flinched, and her patience was ever closer to the edge.

"He didn't unlock the door. It just, sort of . . . fell off. We didn't hear anything, so it couldn't have been explosives. There was just this clattering noise and we looked up to see that the door had literally fallen off its hinges."

"Who was closest to him?"

" . . . Ma'am?"

Idiot. "You said he attacked Officer Yiaj. Was that because he was closest, or did he target him?"

"He, uh . . ." Brows knitted together and the fool took an unbearably long time to think about it. "He had to push past one of the boys to get to him. That shield of his just knocked us aside."

"And yet he was able to kill Yiaj with his own hands."

"Yes. He killed him and grabbed his communicator. That was when he got that message out."

An agent of the Star right under her very nose, all this time. She always knew there was something that didn't quite fit with the Prowler, but she had never thought him to be an assassin or a warrior of any sort. She could see in his eyes that the boy was young and inexperienced, a little too confident for his own good. She had never thought that the confidence might have been based on something that was actually threatening.

"The other one he killed earlier. He was new too, wasn't he?"

"Yes, ma'am. First day. We figured he goes after the new boys because they're not experienced in combat yet."

"No, you idiot!" she hissed, and this time her patience ran thin enough that her mind projected a stab of pain, causing him to gasp and step backwards. "It's that shield of his. Any new soldiers weren't programmed into it, obviously. How could he possibly have programmed it for every person that would be here? It's impossible."

"My question is how does he even know which boys are new? There are too many faces around here to spot a new one."

Ah. The first useful thing he'd said all day. She'd have to come back to that.

Now the message.  _Jack_ , he had said,  _Plan B_. Was that a coincidence? The Doctor travelled with a man called Jack Harkness. It was a common name, she supposed. There could be a dozen Jacks just on her ship. Was it possible that Jack Harkness had been on her ship all along?

Whoever it had been, they had somehow slipped past all her men alone.

"What happened next?" she asked, carefully balancing the information in her head.

"The doors to the other cells started falling off, just like the first one. He called the other prisoners to him and they all huddled in close. That shield kept us away from them. We surrounded them, hoping they might step out of its boundaries by mistake so we could grab them, but that shield just kept knocking into the men like a wrecking ball."

"But it didn't harm the other prisoners?"

"No ma'am."

That was to be expected, she supposed, if it had been so carefully programmed. "Continue."

"Then those other men showed up and started killing everyone."

She could see them in his mind—just a handful of people, half of which clearly had no idea what they were doing. Normally she would have beaten this man within an inch of his life for being so foolish as to have run from such a group had it not been for one exception.

"I saw him, milady."

And there he was, in that dull little mind. Her father. With a denndi swollen on his chest and blood spattered across his entire body, he marched. She had hoped that the baby might be born before all this ugliness started but it seemed that Father had no patience for it. The denndi was still young, but perhaps it was just old enough to survive an extraction.

Something caught her mind's attention. Someone was at the door, panting, having run a long way. Urgent news. She whispered into his mind that he could enter, and the door swung open.

The soldier practically fell to his knees before her, blood dripping from his chin to the floor. "She's pushing forward, my queen," he gasped breathlessly. "They are docking on all sides. We don't even know where some of them are coming from. But we can't stop her and she's pushing towards your chambers."

She stared down at the man in surprise and quickly searched the images of his mind. She saw the warrior priests of Godforge, clad in their sacred shining armour and wielding some of the strongest weapons in the universe, cutting down her men by the dozen. And leading them was a woman—a woman with knowing and determined eyes.

"The Star is a man," she said quietly. "I saw him on Godforge."

"Forgive me, my queen," the soldier replied. "But you saw armour and a helmet."

"The myths all speak of a man."

"The myths speak of a god."

"Shut up!" She struck him with her hand. It infuriated her that he barely even flinched. She couldn't stand how weak this body was.

"This is trickery," she hissed. "A decoy. If I run from this woman, I will likely fall into a trap set by the real Star."

The soldier slowly lifted his head and she felt her hearts speed up when he looked her directly in the eye. "Your first instinct is to run?"

He saw weakness. While one man snivelled and cowered before her, this one saw weakness. A challenge. A threat.

He seemed to think of it at just the same moment she did because she saw him reach for his gun. She broke through the walls of his mind and told it that it was burning, lighting up every nerve with the pain of raging flame. She allowed him to scream and flail about on the floor for a moment, giving him some time to savour his punishment, before snatching a gun from the belt of the other soldier beside her and firing it directly at that primitive skull.

She turned her eyes back to the coward in the room. "The Star is somewhere on the ship," she growled. "Go back out there and tell the men to keep searching. I will not have him slipping past an entire army with a simple distraction."

"Yes, ma'am," the soldier answered shakily and quickly headed for the door.

"And communicate to the men that the Doctor and the Master are capture  _only_ ," she roared after him. "Find which dock they're headed for and send as many men as you can spare. Get me the Time Lords and kill all the rest!"


	71. The Doctor

The Doctor could barely think. Everything he was doing was simply running on autopilot and the rest of him felt frozen. There was so much blood. Harry wasn't speaking. He didn't scream. He didn't even so much as groan from the pain and the blood just kept pouring out.

He realized now that all certainty he had was gone. Even if the future had been bleak, he always had some sort of idea about what was coming. He'd known they had a year. He'd known he would be taken. He'd known that they would wind up here, in Wilfred's house, wounded and borrowing a medical kit from his past self, and he knew that from there they would go to the TARDIS. But then that was it. He knew nothing else. He had no idea if Harry survived. He had no idea what would happen to the baby. He was in a universe of vast and infinite mystery that, for the first time, he was absolutely terrified of.

"GRAMPS, GET SOME ICE!"

Oh, this day. Oh, this beautiful day. He felt his hearts warm a little despite everything else. It made perfect sense that this was the day, of all days, that Harry would wish to return to.

He looked down into those tired brown eyes. "You hear that?" he said, feeling the corners of his mouth tug into a faint smile. "She just slapped you."

Some part of him, tucked away in a corner of his mind, laughed at that. He remembered Jack chuckling away, pleased beyond measure, while Harry simply hadn't known how to react. Donna was all flustered and running through emotions that didn't belong to her until she caught a glimpse of the Doctor. Oh, the memories of this day!

He saw Harry smile a little, just as he hoped he would. The Doctor was about to remind him of other parts of this day to keep him smiling—to do anything that might get a response—but his heart nearly leapt into his throat when Harry's eyes started to slide shut.

"No, no, no!" he cried out desperately, clinging tighter to Harry's body, even shaking him a little. "Keep your eyes open! That's it, stay awake."

He could see the exhaustion in those eyes. Harry was losing energy fast and he wanted so badly just to sleep. The Doctor couldn't believe what was happening. Harry was dying. Right in front of him. He was just dying, and the Doctor wasn't doing anything about it.

Wilfred began stammering out something, but the words sounded like gibberish. His mind was far too focused screaming at his coward self to take action. The blood kept pouring out, like the sand of an hour glass, and Harry and their baby were dying.

"Wilfred, I need you to be quiet and do exactly as I say."

He had to brave. As instructions spilled forth from his mouth, he remembered that he needed to be brave right now. He was the only one who could fix this, so he couldn't stop to be scared or feel sorry for himself. He tried his best to ignore the searing pain as Wilfred reattached his fingers and said a silent prayer of thanks to Shaun for thinking of picking them up.

If he could just stop the bleeding Harry would have a chance. The Doctor was still too afraid to think too much about the baby. He didn't really know what his own heart could take but he knew that losing the baby would just kill Harry. Even when they were children, Harry had always been the more emotionally vulnerable of the two and his heart had simply been broken too many times.

By some miracle, he managed to stop the bleeding. It was a temporary fix, certainly, but it would give him some time to work out what to do next. He would need to find out if the baby was still alive, and then make a plan for the safest way to deliver.

The vortex manipulator beeped and he glanced over at it. It had recharged.

"We have to go," he said, hardly understanding his own voice.

Wilfred smiled at them kindly, blue eyes glistening with the threat of tears. "My boys," the old man said, and the Doctor felt a surprisingly strong surge of reassurance when a wrinkled hand squeezed his shoulder. "Take care of each other."

The Doctor saw Harry nod a little and felt enormous relief that he was at least still conscious and aware enough to do that much. "We will," he promised, swallowing down the lump in his throat.

It was hard to know if he was making these decisions himself or if he was letting his known destiny guide him through the steps, but he willed them to the TARDIS. He had always assumed that he would know what to do when this moment came, and he quickly realized with startling clarity that he didn't have the faintest clue. Where were they supposed to hide?

He'd taken them back in time ten minutes, shortly after the past versions of themselves had left, to buy as much time as possible. He struggled to get Harry to his feet, but the other Time Lord was barely conscious and the horrible feeling of being turned inside out when using a vortex manipulator probably didn't help.

The Doctor tried to lift him next. Under normal circumstances, he probably would have been able to carry him, but his own body was still damaged and bruised. His battered ribs cried out in protest and his torn shoulder lit up with flame. He barely managed to carefully lower Harry to the ground instead of simply dropping him.

He could hear a child laughing somewhere and his eyes darted around. If they were seen, it would raise an alarm somewhere. Police could show up to investigate the sighting of two severely wounded men and the last thing he needed now was the authorities to report the appearance of a blue police box and have UNIT crawling all over them.

"Harry, wake up. Hey." He gave him a gentle slap to the side of his face, just to get his attention, then again a little harder to make him focus. "Harry, I'm sorry, I really am, but I need you to use your legs. I need you to help me get you inside. Then I can take care of you and you can go to sleep, okay?"

Those brown eyes were fluttering, barely awake, and his skin was so very pale. How much blood had he lost so far? Maybe he couldn't even understand the Doctor anymore?

He was about to try lifting him again when Harry's feet scraped against the pavement. "Good man!" the Doctor cried out happily and slid him arm around Harry's ribs to help him up. "That's it. That's it. Careful now."

It was extremely difficult and rather painful, but Harry was able to bear enough of his own weight that the Doctor could get them moving. He remembered the little trick River Song had taught him and had to use his left hand to snap his fingers. They stumbled through the TARDIS door and the Doctor glanced back to see the more than noticeable smears of blood they had left behind.

That certainly wasn't there when he returned from Wilfred's house. He glanced down and realized how filthy they were and how easily they were leaving a trail. He wouldn't have time to come back and clean this up.

"Boris!"

Thankfully the swarm must not have been far, maybe even in the same room, as it appeared within seconds. The Doctor very quickly explained that they were in the wrong timestream and could not leave any evidence of their presence. Boris swept outside without hesitation and cleaned the blood off the pavement almost instantly. The Doctor felt too relieved to remember the blood they had found on the door.

It took so long to cross a room like this and he had no idea where to go. Boris travelled along behind them to clean up any trails they left but that didn't tell him where he needed to hide Harry. More than just hiding, he needed to find somewhere that was fit for a patient and he was running out of time.

He decided to head for his medical lab. He knew that he and Jack would go there shortly after returning, but they could hide in the room beside it. That way he would have easy access to medicine and other supplies. It wasn't ideal, but it was the best he could think of.

Harry was losing his strength quickly. As they passed the great wooden door for the Bio Lab, Harry's legs gave out and they both nearly tumbled to the floor. The Doctor managed to save them, but it pulled on his wounded shoulder and he was certain he felt it tear back open.

"Harry, please," he said quickly, trying to support the weight on his own while Harry's feet scrambled to stand solidly again. "You can do this. It's not much further."

They were running out of time quickly. Even if he managed to get Harry to the lab before their past selves caught up, it wouldn’t be long before they'd need to find another shelter. How the hell was he supposed to pull this off?

As Harry's weight became heavier and each step became harder, the Doctor heard something strange. Up ahead, just a little way down the hall, he heard a heavy clanking like enormous cogs turning and great bolts sliding out of place. He struggled to quicken their steps, to see what was happening.

The Doctor’s eyes widened, looking up in surprise at that infernal door that had never opened or given away any of its secrets. That door had always been there, since the day he took the TARDIS, and it had stood firmly shut. Now it was opening. Just as they approached, its locks were releasing, and the door opened with a hiss all on its own.

Part of his mind screamed at him that it couldn't be trusted, but the rest of him didn't care. He couldn't get Harry all the way to the medical lab without getting caught at the rate they were going. Maybe this was the TARDIS's doing. Maybe she had decided to finally let him inside that room as a way to protect them.

He shoved the door open the rest of the way and tried to step through, but Harry's hand shot up to grab the door frame. The Doctor turned his head to look at him and saw a look of fear etched across Harry's face, his fingers white from gripping the frame. Why was he afraid of this room?

"We don't have a choice," he muttered and tugged at his side just strong enough to make him let go.

Harry slumped against him completely now, his head falling back and his arm dangling uselessly beside him. The Doctor's body screamed in protest, but he managed to drag the heavy body through the door. There was a bed right there, just around that first corner, and he managed to get Harry to it and drop him rather ungracefully on top of it.

He didn't even have time to catch his breath before something else demanded his attention. Something beeped quietly, and a light flashed on the wall. He looked up to find a screen embedded just beneath it that showed him the console room and, more importantly, allowed him to see that the door was open.

He bolted back out the door and ran down the hall as fast as his legs would allow. Finding somewhere to hide wouldn't do them any good if his past self was able to simply look at the video records and see them making their way there.

It was too early for that version of him. He knew himself well enough to know how he would react to those images. To see Harry hurt so badly, to see him carrying a denndi that was clearly injured—it only confirmed his worst fears. He would back off and shut Harry out. His feelings would become a weakness instead of a strength. He wouldn't be strong enough to get them here, now.

The Doctor got to the nearest control station and worked at it furiously. Luckily, the TARDIS seemed aware of the situation and was prepared to help. She cooperated with him fully and it took under a minute for him to completely erase any video footage of them making their journey through the halls. Then he set it not to begin recording again for another two minutes and ran like hell.

He never felt such great relief as he did when he got through that door way again. Recognizing that he finally had a chance to stop, his body decided that it had had enough, and he fell to his knees with a great sigh. He heard the door close and lock behind him and actually found himself chuckling in disbelief. Why he ever thought that this part would be easy, he had no idea. And there was so much work left to be done.

He let his head fall back on his shoulders, taking a moment just to breathe. He opened his eyes to glance around the room and found it suspiciously well prepared.

The bed he'd dropped Harry on was made for two, but there was a small cot against another wall. There was shelving in one corner that was stocked with basic medical supplies—bandages, medication, I.V. equipment and bags. He noticed a white rectangle in the center of the floor large enough for a grown man to lay on and recognized it as a tuck-away table—there would be controls somewhere in the room that would allow him to make it rise, convenient for any medical attention he would need to give Harry.

There were three doors in the wall across from him and he pulled himself to his feet to look at them. The first door revealed a complete bathroom and the second was a small store room for food that had been set on a separate timestream, keeping everything just as fresh as the minute it had been placed there. The third door was a walk-in closet full of plenty of clean clothes. As the Doctor glanced over them, he recognized one of his own blue suits. He looked further and found one of his brown suits, his dress shirts, his T-shirts, the jeans he wore on lazy days, even his pajamas. A glance at the other side showed him exactly what he expected to see: Harry's clothes.

Then something else caught his eye and he looked down. Sitting on the floor, alongside a pair of Harry's shoes, was a basket full of clothing. But they didn't belong to the Doctor or Harry—they were clothes for a baby boy. Baby blankets, wraps, onesies, socks, little mittens to keep him from scratching himself. The Doctor started tearing through the other boxes and baskets lining the bottom of the closet—diapers, bottles, wipes, pacifiers. He even found a bassinet in one corner with a few stuffed animals inside it.

This room was not something left over by the previous owner. This room was built for  _them_. Built for them and designed for this day. Hundreds of years ago, someone knew they would be coming and that the Doctor would need to deliver their baby, and had built the perfect room to hide them in for it all.

The Doctor turned his head to look back out through the closet door. He could see straight across the room to the wall opposite, to the back of the door that they had stumbled through just minutes ago. Just as he had expected to see it, painted with care on the back of that door, was the image of the Haephsian Sun.

And, beneath it, in the circular patterns that only a Time Lord or someone who possessed a reading translator could understand, he saw the Gallifreyan word meaning Sun or Star.

_ Ganbri _ .


	72. The Doctor

There had to be more to the message. The Doctor scrambled around the room, checking the other walls and doors for any other markings but found nothing. The only evidence of the Star's presence to be found was the image of the Haephsian Sun and the word ganbri.

But why write it in Gallifreyan? _How_ wasn't really a question that bothered him—the TARDIS herself was from Gallifrey and would have provided the word to anyone who knew how to ask, and there were other ways besides. He briefly wondered whatever happened to the translator glasses he gave to Wilfred.

But  _why_  Gallifreyan? What was the point? To connect somehow? To gain trust? There were several words for 'star' in their language but ganbri was used specifically for stars with solar systems that could support life. Was he meant to derive something from that?

There must have been some sort of message in it and he was certain that he would find it when he had the time, but Harry needed him. The other Time Lord was well asleep by then and the Doctor decided it was best not to wake him. He did promise Harry he could sleep after all.

It took him a few minutes to summon up his courage before he could bring himself to look for the baby's heartbeat. The poor little thing had been through much more than any unborn person could be expected to handle and the Doctor wasn't sure if he had been able to cope.

His own rush of emotion surprised him when he finally heard the little heartbeat again and his eyes immediately blurred with tears. He laughed a little and then quickly placed the ear pieces of his stethoscope in Harry's ears, even though he was asleep, so that he could hear the heartbeat too.

"He's a tough one," he chuckled a little, wiping the tears from his eyes. "Too stubborn to give up, just like his Tokrah."

The Doctor set to work making sure that there was no immediate danger and then doing whatever scans he could to properly assess the damage. He needed to know as much as he could before he could make any decisions about what to do. It was still rather early to remove the baby. If it had been a couple of weeks later, Harry's body would have already gone into labour and begun producing enzymes to thin out the skin and tissue surrounding the denndi, dissolving and safely sealing off the connecting blood vessels. Eventually, the tissue would become so thin that they would have been able to see through the membrane and look at the blurry shape inside it that was their baby. Then finally, when the baby was ready, the membrane would rupture, the baby could be removed, and the remaining connections between father and child were easily and safely severed.

The labour for a denndi was uncomfortable and lasted for days, sometimes for over a week, but the birth itself was usually quick and relatively painless. At this stage, however, it was a very different story. The surrounding membrane and tissue was still very thick and full of large blood vessels that were still wide open—they could bleed Harry out in minutes if they were cut.

He was quickly discovering that he wouldn't have the luxury of waiting for Harry's body to go through the natural process. The damage caused by the force field had already severed a few important blood vessels. The baby was not getting his needed supply, and Harry was suffering greatly from his body's desperate attempts to fix the problem. They were both growing weaker.

"Doctor."

The raspy sound startled him, and he dropped the pen he had been nervously chewing on. Harry's eyes were open, albeit only a little, and his mouth was resting in a sleepy smile as he looked up from his bed.

"She's pretty."

The Doctor’s mind froze for a second, unsure of what to do, and then he chuckled nervously. "Who is?"

"Annabelle."

He searched his memory for the name but found nothing. "Who?"

"Annie," Harry answered, smiling a little wider while his eyes closed a little more. "He was thinking of her and I saw her face. She's very pretty."

"Who are you talking about?"

"He showed me her face," Harry continued as though he hadn't heard, his speech slightly slurred and sounding like his mind was so very far away. "And he said that he never told her that he likes her so much. Always waiting for the right moment . . . just like I did with you."

"Is that why you went back?"

"No," Harry answered with a shake of his head that seemed to take too much effort. "Why is it so cold?"

"It's not cold in here."

"I'm freezing."

He was so pale, his lips nearly white. Of course he was cold. The Doctor gathered up the extra blankets sitting on the end of the bed and pulled them up, laying them over Harry and being sure to tuck them in around his shoulders. Harry was visibly shivering and his eyes couldn't seem to focus.

"Harry, listen," he said firmly. "I need you to tell me what you heard. You have to tell me why you went back. I can go back and fix it if you just tell me."

Harry was looking at him, but it was like he was gazing right through him. "That's not what happened."

"Time can be rewritten."

"No," Harry answered abruptly before lurching forward.

At first the Doctor thought he was trying to get up and quickly leaned forward to hold him down, telling him that he needed to rest. It was too late that he realized Harry's goal was entirely different. He felt a hand force its way into his pocket and close around the vortex manipulator. The Doctor shot his hands downward to try to stop him but, even in his exhausted state, Harry was too quick. He'd already removed the vortex manipulator and shattered it against the floor.

The Doctor’s mouth hung open in surprise and he blinked at Harry. Those brown eyes simply stared back unapologetically.

"Starlight," he said, as though that explained everything. "They thought it was starlight."

Harry's eyes slid shut and his body relaxed. For a moment, the Doctor could only sit there, trying to figure out what to do. Harry was weak and delirious from blood loss, the baby was in great distress, they faced the constant risk of being discovered by their past selves, and it was entirely possible that Kahlia or her people could hunt them down through time and find them here.

It was absolutely infuriating to feel like the only person without information. He spent days with the Prowler and hardly learned a thing, but Harry's telepathic ability had granted him insight without even trying. The Prowler was an agent of the Star and that meant he probably knew who the Star really was, what his plan was, and how he had planned their escape to the point of knowing it would go wrong and they would wind up here. Someone with that kind of information could give the Doctor the upper hand again, if only he had another chance to speak with him.

Suddenly the light on the wall came alive again, and the screen flickered to show him the medical lab just in time to hear Donna cry out happily: "Disneyland!"

"Sounds wonderful," he heard himself say.

Was that really a whole year ago? Was that  _only_  a year ago? They all looked so happy. No one was hurt or afraid. And more than that, they were in for the night of their lives. Their first dance had been on that night. It was the night that he realized that he might seriously be falling in love with Harry. The first night he invited him to his bed. A night so wonderful that he was back for the third time.

And then it clicked. "He's coming here," he said aloud. His hearts sped up when he realized why the TARDIS had shown him the medical lab—to show him he still had a chance to speak with the Prowler.

The Doctor had some time before that window of opportunity and he spent it well. He got Harry washed, changed into clean bedclothes, and bandaged up as best as he could. While he set up machines to monitor the baby, he knew Jack Harkness was flitting about the TARDIS setting up surveillance to catch them. He set up an I.V. drip to keep Harry hydrated and one to encourage the reproduction of blood cells, then hurried to throw on a clean suit and clean the wound on his head. The last thing he needed was to get held up by security for frightening tourists.

His fingers ached and didn't always cooperate with him. He realized now that Wilfred had reattached them very slightly crooked so that, when he bent them, they went a little bit to the side instead of just straight down. On top of that, the reattachment was only done as properly as one could expect under the circumstances, so it would be very easy to tear them off again if he wasn't careful.

The TARDIS shook and wailed as it landed, and the Doctor only stopped to kiss Harry's forehead before bolting out the door. His hearts pounded wildly as he ran, feeling surprisingly nervous—this was so incredibly dangerous. One wrong step and his past self could catch him. One wrong word and he might make the Prowler change history.

He cracked open the door to the console room just enough to peek in. They'd already stepped outside, and the door was closed. If he remembered correctly, no one came back inside once they left so he hurried through to the police box doors on the other side.

The Doctor remembered, on that day, after seeing a seemingly random person try to open the TARDIS doors, thinking that he had forgotten to lock it and checking afterwards. When he found the door locked, it drove him crazy thinking about it because he could have sworn he didn't lock it. As he looked down at the lock now, he realized that he had, in fact, forgotten and promptly turned it to keep the Prowler out.

He peeked through the windows, at the blurred and colourful shapes of the night, and waited. They stood outside for a little while talking and then, just as expected, a shadow passed over the window. The doors rattled on the hinges and refused to open.

"Oi!" he heard Harry shout. "What you playing at, boy?"

He watched the silhouette of the Prowler turn around to smile at them. "Sorry, mate," he said. "Wrong door."

It was incredibly difficult not to fly out the door then, grab the Prowler by the neck, and drag him back inside. He had to wait for the others to move on. His past self came up to the TARDIS to double-check the lock and, shortly after, they vanished into the crowd.

This was it, his one and only chance. He peeked out of the doors to make sure that the whole group had moved away before slipping outside. The Prowler couldn't have gotten too far away but he took off running in the direction he went anyway. He pushed past tourists and was so very thankful for his height as he looked over heads. Still, it was surprisingly difficult to spot a very average looking man out of a swarm of people.

He didn't actually spot the Prowler until he had almost run past him. He turned his head to scan the crowd again, saw him standing no more than four feet away, and launched forward without hesitation. He managed to grab hold of the Prowler's arm tightly and nearly pulled him over.

The Prowler gave a startled shout, there was a flash of light, and the Doctor's hand seared with heat, forcing him to let go. A quick glance down showed him that the skin of his hand had gone a bright pink but didn't seem to be damaged. Looking up again showed him the Prowler's eyes staring at him wide, terrified.

He grabbed the Prowler's arm again, staring him straight in the eye, and pulled him away from the crowd.

"What are you doing here?" the Prowler asked, seemingly in shock. "You're not supposed to be here!"

" _You're_  not supposed to be here!" the Doctor shouted back as they neared the thinning edges of the crowd.

"I know," he answered with a sigh of defeat.

That was surprising. The Doctor was actually thrown off by that.

"Listen, I need you to help me."

"Help you?" the Doctor repeated, blinking in surprise. "I came to find out what you know."

"That's a dangerous game."

"It always is."

"I need you to tell me what it looks like," the Prowler said quickly, his eyes scanning the area as he spoke. "I forgot that it didn't always look like a police box."

The Doctor narrowed his eyes at him.  _Wrong door_ , that's what he had said. The Prowler was here for the TARDIS, but he was here for the old one.

"Why are you looking for it?"

"This is the first night you had it, right?" the Prowler answered, grinning with child-like excitement. "This is the night you sto—"

"I  _borrowed_  it!"

The Prowler actually stopped to raise an eyebrow at him with an utterly unconvinced look on his face. "This is the night you stole it," he repeated firmly. "So any changes have to be made  _tonight_ , before you know it too well to notice."

The Doctor stared at him with wide eyes and, though he was certain he already knew the answer, he asked, "What changes?"

"I'm supposed to build a room," the Prowler answered simply. "Judging by the gash in your head, I'm guessing you've already seen it. You said you got the scar before the escape."

Now he really did have to be careful. If he accidentally prevented the Prowler from completing his mission, their safe haven would never have existed. And what would happen to them then?

"Who told you that you're supposed to build it?" he asked quietly.

"What?"

"You said you're 'supposed to'," the Doctor repeated. "If it was your plan, you would have just said you were going to. 'Supposed to' means someone told you to do it."

The Prowler's eyes widened with uncertainty. He stammered a little, shifting his weight nervously. "I don't think I should be talking to you."

"You need me to find the TARDIS, now answer me!" he shouted, losing his patience now and grabbing hold of the Prowler's shirt to give him a stern shake. "Tell me who gave you those orders!"

"My sister did!" the Prowler shouted in return, shoving the Doctor hard to free himself. "Holy shit, calm down!"

"Your  _sister_?" the Doctor asked in surprise and partial disbelief. "The Star is a man."

"The Star is a myth," the Prowler corrected.

"And we're all just regular people, I know!" the Doctor snapped. "Who are you people? How does she know so much about us?"

"I can't tell you. Having this conversation—I could say something at any second that could  _completely_  screw up our timelines. You know how this works."

"If you don't tell me, I won't tell you what the TARDIS looks like," the Doctor growled in return. "And with a fully functioning chameleon circuit, you'll never find her just by looking."

"I can't," the Prowler answered almost desperately. "I can't. It'll mess everything up. That's why I'm here and she's not."

"What do you mean?" he asked quickly. "Why didn't she come herself?"

The Prowler shifted his weight uncomfortably, looking back to the crowds as if seeking help. "Look, this is already bad enough. If I answer this, can you please just tell me what the TARDIS looks like, so I can go?"

As much as he hated it, the Prowler was right. That room had to be built to sustain this timeline. He couldn't jeopardize a timeline that gave them a safe place to escape during such a critical time.

"Fine."

"She said you would recognize her."

"I recognized you."

"Yeah, but you don't  _know_  me," the Prowler answered quickly. "You know my face and probably some stupid fake name, but that's it. Now tell me how to find the TARDIS."

He hated it. He hated everything about it. He felt just like he did when he met River Song—that horrible uneasiness and distrust of meeting someone that just knew too much. He wanted to demand to know more. He wanted to be on even ground again. But, as much as he hated it, he had to agree that it was too dangerous.

"Head that way," he said, feeling utterly defeated. "You'll see a white photo booth next to the big fountain with all the stone dragons sitting around it. That's the TARDIS. We won't be back for at least three hours."

"Thank you," the Prowler answered quickly, looking very relieved as he gave the Doctor a quick handshake. "And good luck."

The Prowler turned to dash into the crowd, but the Doctor grabbed his arm one last time. "Listen," he said quietly. "This sort of thing . . . anything can happen. Take it from someone who's made the mistake and tell Annie how you feel."

The Prowler smiled more warmly than the Doctor had ever seen him. "Thanks."

The Doctor watched him vanish into the crowd and felt a little ill. He had expected that talking to the Prowler would put him at ease but, instead, he felt more uncomfortable with the whole situation than ever. He made his way back to the TARDIS quickly, keeping an eye out for anyone from his past in case he accidentally crossed their path, and replayed the conversation in his head.

The Prowler had been the Star's brother all along. He sat there in that cell, barking down the Mechanic's faith and denying the hope of some great power coming to save them, even though he knew her saviour was real. That must have been why his shield was so carefully programmed to protect his blood. He shared the blood of the Star.

The Doctor glanced down at his hand, still bright pink and feeling unusually warm. He remembered the golden flash he'd seen when he grabbed hold of the Prowler and startled him, triggering the strange defensive instinct. A light that burned flesh and came from within the body itself.

Starlight.


	73. Harry

Annabelle.

Harry could see her face so clearly. Brown eyes streaked with golden honey and shimmering black hair that curled in perfect tumbles down to her shoulders. He could hear her laughing, see the caramel skin of her slender legs as she sunbathed on a beach beneath a pink sky, and fell the warmth of her hand resting in his.

But they weren't his memories. Harry couldn't even remember who Annabelle was. He couldn't remember whose eyes he saw through or whose heart he felt with. All he knew was that it was cold and something inside him was afraid.

He reached out to the other consciousness and could almost see it trembling and whimpering before him.  _Shh_ , he thought, letting his mind release ripples of soothing thoughts.  _It's okay_.

The little mind answered him, quiet, uncertain, and unable to use words. The baby sent back feelings of fear and confusion. He was so very tired and missed the warmth he was used to. He was worried about how different things were all of a sudden—so slow and cold.

Harry wondered what he meant, and the baby sent back the sound of a heartbeat, unusually loud in his ears but clearly weak and much slower than usual.

_ That's just me, _  he thought in return,  _and you won't have to listen to it much longer. You get to come out soon._

The message back was so clear that it may as well have been spoken words:  _I don't want to come out._

Harry was just too tired to deal with that fear and too confused to find out what was really going on. He would have given answers if he could but, right now, it seemed like too much work to even open his eyes. So he thought of those memories that didn't belong to him—they were soothing and, best of all, seemed to be surfacing all on their own.

_ Here, look at Annabelle, _  he thought, letting the images slip forward.  _She's pretty._

Now . . . where was that starlight he was waiting for?

With enormous effort, he managed to open his eyes. Before him was a sight that might have stopped his hearts if his body could remember how to do such a thing, but today he would have to settle for a smile. His eyes lost focus a little but he felt the muscles in his face move appropriately.

He'd always dreamt of waking up next to the Doctor—that mad old man with his head full of stars and magic. Different parts of his mind were arguing with each other over whether this was the first time but, judging by the way the Doctor was looking at him, Harry was sure they'd woken up together before.

"Did I ever tell—?"

"You did," the Doctor interrupted in a strangely shaky voice, like there was gravel stuck in his throat. "Several times, in fact. Look here, Harry."

Harry forced his eyes to open properly. Exhausting. The Doctor was lying on the bed beside him, his face half buried in pillow that almost covered the small wet trail that started in the corner of his eye. The Doctor was directing his attention to their hands and he looked down to find the Doctor's fingers entwined in his own. He immediately thought of feeling the warmth in Annie's hand, but this felt more real.

"Whose ring is that?" he asked, surprised to hear how hoarse his own voice sounded.

"Mine," the Doctor answered quickly. "You gave it to me."

Harry snorted at the thought of it and would have laughed if he had the energy. "You'd never wear a ring." Absurd.

"I do for you."

_ I like that voice. _

"We went to the mountain top," the Doctor said quietly, squeezing his hand a little. "And the lights put on their best show, just for us. You helped Boris get all dressed up because you wanted him there."

_ That's a good voice. _

"We thought that if we did it quick and quietly that no one would notice. But Donna started shouting at me, all rough and mad, and Wilfred got out his camera—"

"Where is Grandfather?"

_ I want to hear the good voice. _

"I don't know," the Doctor answered with another shivery breath. "It's just us right now."

_ Hello? _

Grandfather could help him make sense of all this, he was sure. "I wish he was here."

"I do too."

_ Hello, Good Voice? _

The Doctor was saying something to him then but he couldn't really hear it. The feelings of longing that came from the little mind inside of him were getting so strong that he could barely think. The baby was frustrated that he couldn't communicate the way that Harry and the Doctor could. He wanted to talk to the Doctor, that much was obvious even without words.

"Just talk to him," Harry muttered, feeling ready to just go back to sleep again.

The Doctor blinked. "What?"

"He's scared," he murmured, eyelids growing heavier by the second. "Talk to him."

Thankfully, the Doctor knew what he meant without further explanation. He felt warm hands slide over the icy skin on his chest and emotions full of calmness and love flood his mind. The Doctor spoke and the little mind inside him relaxed, quieting down and allowing Harry to focus.

Where were they now? Why was it so much work to breathe? And whose thoughts were stuck in his head?

"Harry," the Doctor's voice interrupted his thought process. "I need to tell you something."

That was a very serious tone. Even if nothing else made sense, Harry knew the Doctor well enough to understand what that voice meant. Why did he sound afraid?

"I can't repair the damage," the Doctor continued, breath shaking as he gripped Harry's hand tightly. "The baby isn't getting enough blood and he won't survive that way for long but I—"

"Take him out."

The Doctor chuckled but it was clear from the stifled sound beneath it that he found nothing amusing about the situation. "You haven't even heard the rest yet, stupid."

He didn't need to hear the rest. He knew enough just from the Doctor's voice and the strength in his grip. But the Doctor didn't understand. If he could just understand, this wouldn't even be a question. It was so hard to talk that he couldn't tell the Doctor all those important reasons—that the baby thought and felt and wondered like any real person did. That he had good dreams and bad dreams and felt comforted by his father's voice. That he was already aware of the existence of an outside world because Harry had communicated the idea to him. That he had thought up the colour purple all by himself.

If only he could say those things, the Doctor would understand. If only he could remember those very important things . . .

"He's alive," he said instead.

"I know." The Doctor's voice cracked.

Harry remembered the proud young boy he met that day in the woods and the proud man he had grown up to be. Partly to preserve the Doctor's dignity, but partly because it was just so tempting to go back to sleep, he closed his eyes. Maybe he would wake up somewhere warm.

"Harry, don't," the Doctor's voice spoke up again and Harry felt his hands gripping his arms tightly. "Please, don't. Stay awake, okay? Just for a little while. Just talk to me."

"But it's cold," he answered, struggling to open his eyes again. "Why is it so damn cold?"

"I can't get the heating working."

That was a lie. A bold-faced lie and he couldn't even bother to make it sound convincing. Did those silly little comforting deceptions really work on the Doctor's humans?

"Tell me the rest," he whispered, just wanting so badly to sleep.

The Doctor swallowed and took a couple of breaths before answering. "The sooner I do the surgery, the higher the chance that you'll . . . that you'd—"

"Die?" he offered.

The Doctor took a few more seconds to gather himself. "The bleeding will be significant," he answered quietly.

"But the longer you wait—"

"The less chance the baby has of surviving."

"You can't do a surgery like this on your own," he said, squeezing the Doctor's hand as best he could. "No matter what, it'll reach a point where we're both in trouble—"

"No," the Doctor interrupted firmly.

"You'll take him out and he'll be weak—"

"Harry, don't."

"He'll need your help and I'll be bleeding—"

"Stop it."

"There will be a moment," he continued, ignoring the Doctor's growing distress because he knew that he needed to hear this. "When you'll have to choose—"

"Just shut up!"

"I want you to take care of the baby."

Harry forced his eyes open properly and willed them to focus. The Doctor was staring at him with wide and angry eyes that were brimming full of tears. He hadn't wanted to hear that, the poor old loving fool. Harry had always thought that reality was sometimes a bit too hard on his dear Doctor.

"Who knows," he said, pulling his lips up into a smile. "Maybe I'll regenerate?"

"You won’t, and you know it."

If only he could remember how to make the Doctor understand. Everything would be okay in the end. No matter what happened. Somewhere out there, they were dancing together underneath the stars and watching fireworks, feeling nervous with butterflies in their stomachs. Somewhere, he was having the happiest night of his life. That night was the first night they ever spent together, even if it might also be the last. That made it okay. That was more than enough to make it okay.

The Doctor shifted in the bed to move closer and Harry happily allowed himself to be taken hold of and pulled in to an embrace. His head rested against the Doctor's chest, he felt breath on the top of his head, and there were fingers resting in his hair and on his back. It was much warmer to be there. Where in the world was all that heat coming from?

"What do you want me to name him?"

For some reason, that made him laugh. It came out weak and coughing, while pains shot through his chest, but it felt good to laugh a little.

"I have no idea."

They were quiet a moment, thinking, while the Doctor stroked his hair. "The Star has helped us more than we could ever have asked for. We wouldn't be here without their help."

Ah, of course. It was an old tradition on Gallifrey to name children after someone important in the parents' lives, especially if a debt was owed. It was considered bad manners to take the name directly—like stealing someone's identity—but a modified version of a name, in meaning or in sound, was thought honourable. Harry had followed tradition with the naming of all his children, though he was fairly certain that the Doctor hadn't cared for it when he began his own family.

"Star is a girl's name."

"But Ganbri isn't," the Doctor answered quickly.

"Ganbri isn't even a name."

"Nobody needs to know that."

"It still sounds like a girl's name."

"It doesn't in the slightest!" the Doctor protested, and Harry was happy to hear that some of the stress had vanished from his voice. " _Ganbri_  . . . it's a manly name!"

The warmth was making it hard to stay awake again. "Then we'll name him Ganbri," he agreed quietly. "And when he's older, you can explain to him why he has a girl's name."

He knew that the Doctor answered him. He heard some muffled sound and felt some vibrations against his ear, but he never caught the words. Talking so much was truly exhausting, and the warmth of the Doctor's body was such a welcome feeling that he had to close his eyes.

Harry knew that he was sleeping, but it seemed completely restless. He'd wake just to cough, at the feeling of the Doctor injecting him with something, or to the baby kicking out in panic. Once he even woke to the Doctor shouting at him and shoving his hands against his chest so hard that it felt like he was ripping open. He gasped for breath and laid there feeling more confused than ever as the Doctor damn near burst into tears. He was asleep again before he had time to ask what all that madness was about.

It seemed the world was colder every time he opened his eyes. Despite the Doctor's continued efforts, everything turned to ice and emptiness. The cold bit down into his bones and chilled his blood. Now, when he woke, he'd lost all ability to speak. His lips had forgotten how to move—even when the Doctor's own pressed against them to share the warmth, they stayed stubbornly still and lifeless.

And as the world grew colder, the little voice inside him seemed to grow quieter. The haggard look on the Doctor's face when he opened his eyes told him that hours had passed. Had the night already gone? How long had that mad man been awake?

It seemed like everything ached, but he noticed it most in his chest—a horrible cramping feeling like his body was trying to tear itself apart from the inside out. He realized that the Doctor must have shot him with some hormones to induce labour and it seemed to be working. Maybe a day would be long enough to help?

He saw the image of Annabelle again and wished she were there. She'd hold his hand and tell him to suck it up, to be brave. She could probably make the Doctor smile, maybe even laugh. She had always been good at bringing out his inner child, making him forget what so many centuries had done to him.

He could remember seeing the Doctor laugh with Annie back in the days when that nasty gash in his head was only a scar. It never seemed real then.

But no, that wasn't right. Those weren't his memories.

When the Doctor came to kiss his head and say that he was making a run out for supplies, Harry saw just how dreadful he really looked. He tried to speak, but his lips wouldn't work. All that came out was a strange sounding wheeze.

He wanted to tell the Doctor why he didn't need to be so sad or so afraid. He wanted to tell him why, no matter what happened, it would all be okay. Because Harry could remember a future where the Doctor had nothing but an old scar on his head, a couple of crooked fingers, and a truly genuine smile.

Even if he didn't see himself there.


	74. The Doctor

Boris was scared for Harry. When the Doctor opened the door to sneak outside, the shadow was waiting for him, drifting back in forth in the hallway like a cloud of worrisome thoughts. The Doctor wanted to tell him not to worry, but he couldn't bring himself to say it.

Instead, he just looked into that mass of swirling darkness and found himself at a loss for words. "Boris, I don't . . ." He sighed. "I need supplies."

He hurried off down the hall toward the medical lab. He remembered spending this morning locked up in his bedroom with Harry, trying to be quiet and pushing for time, hoping no one would notice anything. He could actually feel the psychic residue in the air of two Time Lord minds fusing together, catching wisps of his own younger, twitterpated thoughts.

Boris was fretting. The swarm was trying desperately to communicate, and the Doctor was only catching whispers of words as the shadows danced around him. He heard words like  _blood_ ,  _hurt_ , and  _safe_  but most of all he heard the word  _Harry_  repeating over and over again.

"He's still alive," he muttered quietly.

The swarm was not satisfied. It was like walking through a fog that argued, so many thoughts buzzing around in his head like angry flies.

 _Help_ , a billion voices whispered to him.  _Help. Help._

They'd already had this discussion. The Doctor had told Boris that he could help by cleaning out the wounds as they opened and by holding back the blood flow if he could, but the bleeding was still likely to be a huge problem. As practiced as he was, the swarm still had significant difficulty holding a solid form and the Doctor doubted that, as eager as Boris was, he would be of much help.

The real problem was the exact moment that Harry mentioned. Once the baby was out, he would demand his attention. It was an early birth and the sudden change from a sheltered home filled with time energy and the guidance of a host to a shockingly empty and silent world was hard on a newborn. An early birth for a Time Lord was usually dangerous because the baby's mind wasn't prepared to handle the world on its own yet.

But, while the Doctor was busy trying to save their son, Harry was going to be bleeding. Boris might be able to hold it back for a while, but every second that passed would be another threat. No matter how he planned it, he always got stuck there.

 _Help,_  the whispers persisted.  _More help._

"Look, do whatever you want," he snapped irritably, quickly severing the mental connection he held between them. "I've got things to do."

The swarm hurried off without hesitation and all the Doctor could do was roll his eyes and carry on. The Prowler's room had been well supplied but it didn't quite have everything he needed or else didn't have enough. Towels, bandages, blankets, gauze—he needed as much as he could get his hands on. He was short a few tools and, more than anything, he really wanted to get his hands on a cell replicator. If he could set one working for a few hours before the surgery, Harry would have an amount of blood in his body that he at least felt semi-comfortable working with.

He dashed around the medical supply room, gathering whatever he thought would be useful. There was no spare cell replicator in that room though and his past self would need the one that was available soon to treat Harry's leg after Jack shot him.

He'd left the spare near the bedrooms, the very last place it was safe for him to go right then. He searched every memory in his head for another he might have in the TARDIS, but he'd broken or taken apart the others. He'd always meant to replace them but there always seemed more important things to do than replacing all the things he managed to destroy.

The Doctor tried to remember the exact timeline of that day to see if he could find a safe gap to run to the bedrooms, but it was hopeless. He would have no choice but to go back with what he had and wait for his younger self and the others to go out for the day. It wouldn't be as much time with the replicator as he would have liked but things could be worse.

He hurried down the hall to the nearest mini-console to erase any security footage the TARDIS may have caught of him. What a stupid plan that had been, really. Now that he was living out this side of the scenario he could remember seeing exactly what Jack had to access in order to review any security he'd set up and it was nearly effortless to erase his tracks. He remembered himself a year ago and blamed it on the desperation of a scared and foolish man.

He put his pile of tools on the floor and quickly set to work on the console. His mind drifted back to his earlier discussion with Harry and wondered if he was right about Ganbri sounding like a girl's name. And did it really matter when they traveled through time and all across space? People named their sons Ashley and their daughters Charlie—the rules about the gender of names were changing constantly. It seemed a perfectly good name for a boy.

"Doctor?"

His whole body tensed up in a gut reaction to bolt but he managed to hold it in. It was just Donna. If he stayed calm and played it right, she would think that he was just doing a bit of early tinkering and there was nothing unusual at all.

"Morning, Donna," he said as calmly and casually as he could manage. "I thought you'd be in the kitchen."

"Yeah, I was just headed there."

She was staring at him. Why was she staring at him? Did she know?

"It's just . . ." she looked at him curiously and stepped forward, holding out a mug. "I forgot to give you your tea."

"Thank you, that was thoughtful."

He took the cup quickly, offering a smile, and turned back to the console. He hoped that she would take the hint and leave but she just stood there, looking at him. Had he turned his head too much? Had she seen the cut on his head? There was nothing he could really do except keep quiet and hope she would move on.

"Are you erasing the memory in the cameras?"

Damn it.

"Why would I do that?" he asked nervously.

"Your hair is too long."

For a second, he froze, completely terrified. She knew. Had he somehow altered the timeline? Then he felt the light brush of Vashta Mereen particles moving over his skin and he instinctively reached out to hear tiny whispers stating proudly:  _help_.

The little bastard.

"You weren't supposed to see me."

It was strange to talk to her like this. After what had happened, it was hard to look at the Donna Noble he had known a year ago and think of her as the same person. It was hard not to want to hug her and apologize for what she'd been through. He'd seen the tiger in her come out and kill a man to save the Doctor's life. He suddenly realized that he wasn't even sure if she was okay, really. She had only been regaining consciousness when Harry got his hands on that vortex manipulator and he had no idea if she had been hurt or not.

Sometimes it felt like this nightmare would never end.

Still, he could trust Donna to make him smile. He couldn't quite manage a laugh, but he chuckled a little when he remembered speaking to her that morning while trying to keep a straight face. He owned up to it now, just to help hold on to that happy thought for a moment longer.

But that happiness shrivelled up back to being nothing more than a distant memory the moment she asked about Harry. He thought about that deathly pale face, the rotten grey to his lips, the unnatural dimness in those brown eyes, and he had no idea what he could say to explain it.

"He says it's too cold," he said simply.

He thought about all the moaning and whinging about the heat that he'd grown so accustomed to and somehow it helped him keep it together as he spoke. Donna believed in him, he knew, but she hadn't seen the state Harry was in. She didn't know that he was too weak to even speak anymore. She didn't know that he stopped breathing in the night and that the Doctor had to spend the most terrifying two minutes of his life bringing him back. She definitely didn't know about the baby . . .

But she did know when the Doctor needed help and when she needed to put her foot down. Every instinct he had told him that allowing her to attend the surgery was a bad idea—he was playing too much with the past it was. But that wonderful woman, his brilliant Donna Noble, knew exactly what to say.

"Where am I for the rest of the day?"

The feeling of relief was instantaneous, the weight on his shoulders suddenly becoming a bit lighter. Of course! Donna never came with them on that day. She stayed behind to nurse a hangover but, looking at her now, she seemed perfectly fine.

Before he knew it, she was charging off to get what he needed from the bedrooms and he actually had a glimmer of hope before him. For the first time since he arrived, he actually thought about what might happen  _after_  the surgery and quickly realized that he still needed to fix the vortex manipulator. He would need tools to fix that too. One more run to get what he needed and then he hurried back to finish reprogramming the TARDIS security footage and wait for Donna to bring him the rest.

The cell replicator was what he was most eager to have and, when she handed it over to him, he felt much better. Maybe he could pull this off after all? It wasn't until she turned to leave again that he remembered to ask her about the name Ganbri.

He liked the name—a star that brought forth and supported life. A good name for anyone. The moment Donna confirmed that she thought it was a man's name, he had decided. He would have liked a bit more discussion with Harry over it, but it seemed circumstances would not allow for that. Either way, the Doctor was sure Harry would be fine with it because he did have some attachment to the old Gallifrey traditions, and they certainly owed a debt to the Star that they could never repay. The name of their child would have to be enough for now.

Donna took off running, hoping not to get caught anywhere she wasn't meant to be, and he was left feeling quite a lot better than he did before. With Donna and Boris to help, there might actually be a chance.

The Doctor hurried back with his arms full of collected prizes and feeling good for once. But, when he opened the door to their hideout, every happy and hopeful thought swept from his mind in an instant.

The room was bright with a golden glow. He dropped everything he held to the floor and rushed to the bedside, finding Harry lying with his eyes open and unseeing. He wasn't breathing. How long had he not been breathing? How could he have been so stupid to waste time talking to Donna after what happened last night?

"Harry, wake up!" he barked, slapping the side of his face. No such luck today. He dropped his head to Harry's chest and listened for a heartbeat. Nothing. But the time energy lighting up the room proved that he was still alive, trying to regenerate.

It was impossible to regenerate while still connected to a denndi, but that wouldn't stop Harry from trying. That mad old man was going to fight for every second, just like he always had, and right now, the Doctor loved him more than ever for it.

He leapt onto his pile of tools that he had collected, knowing there would be an external pacemaker hiding in there somewhere. He quickly attached it to Harry's chest, deciding that the risk to the baby was far greater without it than with it, and set it going. The little device forced electric pulses into the Time Lord's hearts, willing them back to life, while the Doctor grabbed a manual respirator and clapped it over Harry's mouth.

Every second that passed felt like an hour. Looking down into those dim and glazed-over eyes was one of the worst sights he'd ever seen and it was becoming harder and harder to focus. This just couldn't be happening. It simply couldn't. After everything they'd been through, Harry couldn't just fade away from the universe quietly.

"You don't get to die," he heard himself hissing. "Do you hear me? You're not allowed to! Not now."

But Harry's hearts weren't jumping into action on their own and his lungs were only moving as they were told to. The golden light was dimming now, thrashing about in the growing darkness like the last flutters of a candle. It just couldn't be happening. Not so soon. Not after so many centuries of waiting.

Before the Doctor even knew what he was doing, he put his hand flat against Harry's chest and pushed every fighting thought he had into it. He felt his own time energy surging through him—one life he'd never see now, but it was an easy price to pay. Their energies clashed, and the light burst bright again. Harry's body flew into a panic, nerves setting on fire and causing them to thrash like a drowning man. His legs kicked, his back arched, his hands grasped at anything they could find, and the Doctor even felt the baby kick out against his hand in panic.

And then, the most beautiful sound he'd ever heard in all his long life—Harry screamed.

The Doctor released him immediately, feeling the sudden rush of energy almost knock him over as it hurried back inside its host. He watched with a frozen fascination as Harry hurled the respirator across the room and ripped the pacemaker off, gasping and crying out like a man fighting against some great invisible beast.

He was in pain, that much was clear, but he was alive. The Doctor leapt back to the bedside to help him, gripping him tightly and feeling a little guilty at the joy he felt hearing those pained cries. He let himself dive into Harry's mind, finding a chaotic flurry of confusion and panic. The poor man had no idea what was happening or why and he was definitely afraid.

The Doctor pulled out every trick in the book to calm Harry down and spoke aloud the whole time. There were thoughts and memories jumping all over the place and, in the physical world, Harry was making strange sounds like he was choking. His body didn't know whether it was dying or not and his mind was simply trying to figure out which way was up—a horrible feeling, he was sure.

"You'll be alright," the Doctor assured him, feeling very comforted by the strength in Harry's grip as he clutched at the Doctor's arms. "Everything's fine. Just keep breathing with me, okay?"

The Doctor heard Berran crying in the distance somewhere, saw Kahlia's smiling face when she was young, smelled the red fields of Gallifrey on an icy dawn. There was no structure to any of it. Harry's consciousness was just racing through everything it knew to find the scenario that fit.

Then he saw an old and forgotten face through Harry's eyes. He saw himself, looking down with wide and horrified eyes, hands bloodied as they let go of the shard of glass. The day Qhoya died—the day their friendship ended. Harry thought he was dying and, worse, he thought it was at the Doctor's hands. Again.

"I didn't do this to you," he said quickly, pecking kisses on Harry's forehead and face as he held him tighter. "I'm not here to hurt you, lahrre."

He hoped the old Gallifreyan word would help to remind him of their relationship now—a word that was used to refer to a Time Lord's second heart and as a term of affection. He heard the word whispering and repeating in Harry's head, flying past the scattered mess of his mind and trying to find where it belonged. Finally, Harry saw the skies of Kui-Poian and the beautiful colours that danced for them that night.

"Yes, that's right," the Doctor whispered, being sure to make the feelings of calm reach all the way to their baby. He reminded Harry of how they laid together in the grass and of the tender moments they shared afterwards.

He kissed Harry just like he had on that night, touching him gently and telling him that he loved him. That had been the night that their little Ganbri was conceived and it helped Harry to remember what exactly that tiny little consciousness belonged to and how very special it was. Slowly, Harry began to calm down.

Finally, the Doctor was able to let him down gently and talk him back to sleep. His hearts felt broken just from witnessing such a close call—how would he ever survive if he lost them? He was finding it difficult to control himself as he set up the cell replicator, the horrible event replaying in his head over and over again.

What was he supposed to do? What if he couldn't save them?

The Doctor’s hands were shaking as he worked, and his crooked fingers were infuriatingly uncooperative. He felt like he couldn't breathe and he certainly couldn't see through the blur. This was all just so risky. He had no choices, really. He just had to hope for the best.

How would Harry cope if they lost the baby? How could the Doctor raise a child on his own if he lost Harry? It was almost unthinkable. Then he thought of the strong possibility of losing them both and he felt certain that the universe would simply stop. There would just be nothing left at all. How could there be?

"Hello?"

His hearts stopped at the sound of Harry's voice, eyes shooting up to look at the stillness in his face. He was asleep and still so weak. He couldn't possibly have spoken. Then he heard the tapping at the door.

"Doctor?"

Oh, what was he supposed to do? He wanted nothing more than to see a perfectly healthy Harry again. He wanted to hear his voice, hear him laugh. He wanted to watch him smile and see that look he got when he was working something out.

"I don't want to ask you questions," the voice promised. It kept talking but the Doctor didn't care what the words were. Harry was out there, alive and well. He wanted to see the pink in his cheeks and feel the heat in his skin. What if he never felt that warmth again?

". . . I'm just here," Harry's voice said softly from the other side of the door. "Hello?"

He shouldn't. He really shouldn't. He'd already broken so many of his rules regarding time. But what was one more? What if things went wrong later? What if this was his last chance to speak to him?

"I'm in here," he said before he could stop himself. He just needed to talk to him one more time. "Are you alone?"

"I'm alone," the voice answered. "Are you okay?"

 _This is a bad idea. This is a **bad idea**._ He shouldn't tell him anything.

"I thought you weren't going to ask about the future?"

"I wasn't asking if you're injured."

That was it. He couldn't take it. No one had ever known him as well as Harry did, and he would know something was wrong without being told. He could risk it, he decided, and quickly began unlocking the door. And, even if that risk turned sour, it would be worth it.

The Doctor yanked the door open and looked out. There he was, breathing fine with bright eyes and pink cheeks. He was alive. He was so very alive.

"I can't do this."

The words came out breathy and quivering, as if they belonged to someone else. Looking at Harry then felt like looking at a ghost—someone who was long gone and had only left behind a fading shade in the other room.

As he spoke, he knew all along that Harry was only saying whatever he felt was necessary to keep the Doctor calm. He didn't care. He said the things that he needed to say. He told Harry to run when the time came, even though he knew it wouldn't change a thing. Whatever was going on in Harry's head didn't matter because maybe, as he laid in his bed in that hidden room, he might remember what the Doctor told him now.

He heard his own Harry coughing and remembered that he shouldn't leave him alone for long. He took one more moment to look into those brown eyes and to shake his head at the stupid hat Harry insisted on wearing.

Well . . . this was it.

The Doctor leaned forward to kiss Harry gently and prayed that time might stop right there and let him stay. All too soon the moment had passed, and he felt the tears trying to well in his eyes again. This was the most important part. He couldn't leave without saying it.

"I love you, Harry."

He looked at that wonderful, shocked, and absolutely ecstatic expression on Harry's face and it took everything he had not to take hold of him again. He didn't know how he did it, but he did manage to make himself turn away. When he closed the door behind him again and looked down at his pale husband sleeping away, he only hoped that Harry would remember him saying that.


	75. Donna

Donna hadn't felt this nervous since she was a kid. Part of her was a bit too scared and didn't want to go, but the other part knew that the Doctor needed her. He never said when he needed help and he could never admit when he was afraid or worried, but she knew to listen to his eyes instead of his words.

She had hoped that he would look a little more cheerful when she met him again but he actually looked worse. His eyes were dark and exhausted, his mouth fixed in a miserable turn. One corner of his lips twitched upward when he saw her, but he couldn't manage a real smile.

"Is he okay?" she asked quietly.

He shook his head. "He's in a lot of pain," he answered in an odd voice that was barely more than a whisper. "He's tried to regenerate a couple of times."

"That's good, isn't it?" she replied quickly. "I mean, if he regenerates, he'll still be alive, right?"

The Doctor’s lips parted to answer but no words came, and she saw his eyes glisten with tears. She quickly stepped forward and threw her arms around him. The way his fingers clutched at her back and his breath hitched in her ear told her that that was the best thing she could do for him right now. Don't make him talk, just let him know that she was here.

"Eat a sandwich, would you? I can get my arms around you twice," she said. It surprised her that he flinched when she gave his ribs an extra squeeze and she quickly released any pressure she was putting on them. She'd seen the cut on his head, but she hadn't really thought about whether or not he was hurt elsewhere.

He didn't say anything about it. He just gave her a half-hearted smile and took her hand, leading her down the hall. She didn't notice that he was wearing a ring until their fingers were intertwined. He didn't say anything about that either.

She wanted to ask him what had happened, and she especially wanted to know about whatever injuries he was keeping hidden, but she knew he'd never tell. She was already being let in on more than she could have asked for.

"You said it was complicated," she said quietly as they walked. "Harry can't regenerate?"

He nodded his head a bit. "There's more," he said after a moment of thought. "You won't believe me until you see it."

He was right. She never would have believed him. It wasn't until the door opened and she saw the absolutely wretched state Harry was in that she realized how badly she had underestimated the situation. Harry’s skin almost looked grey and his breathing was so shallow that, for a moment, she thought he wasn't breathing at all. And then there was that thing on his chest . . .

"What is it?" she asked.

"A baby."

Her eyes instinctively moved to Harry's left hand and found the ring. It broke her heart to see it. The Doctor that she knew was only just falling in love—acting silly and pretending that nothing unusual was going on. He was so happy. That embarrassed and yet excited look in his eye when Harry asked him to dance the night before had been enough to let her know.

It was terrible to know that this was where he was heading. When she looked up at him again, he nodded grimly, answering her silent question.

"Mine," he said in the faintest of whispers.

Donna took a deep breath, trying not to let herself get too upset. She'd have to be strong for him, to help him keep it together. The game wasn't over yet.

"What do I need to do?"

The Doctor launched into an explanation, puttering about the room and making preparations as he spoke. He explained the problem they were faced with as he performed some checks on Harry and gave him an injection of something. Then, as he was lying out and cleaning his tools, he gave a brief explanation of what each one was and what they did.

She knew she'd never remember it in a million years, but she could try.

They had to roll Harry carefully to get a special sheet underneath him, which they then each took a side of and lifted together to get him off the bed. They laid him in the middle of the floor, but the Doctor hit a switch on the wall and the section of floor beneath Harry began to rise until it stood as tall as an operating table.

"This section has the smallest blood vessels and hopefully won't bleed much," the Doctor explained, pointing to the underside of the enormous lump on Harry's chest. "But the problem is going to be once I separate the baby."

Harry's skin shimmered a golden colour and the Doctor froze. They stood for a second in silence while the Doctor watched him carefully, holding Harry's wrist to check his pulse. After a couple of minutes had passed without incident, he continued.

"The two of them are connected by a very large blood vessel," he muttered, setting to work attaching various monitors to Harry. "It's going to bleed. A lot. I'll be able to fix it all up, but I need time to take care of the baby first."

"Oh, wait, I can do that bit," Donna answered eagerly. "I've seen those shows. You just flip 'em upside down and smack the bum until they cry, right? Or, no, you have to use that turkey baster thing on their nose first,  _then_  you flip—"

"Donna."

"Sorry."

He looked so terribly solemn and so very tired that she was worried about how well he would be able to focus. "This isn't a human baby, remember?" he said quietly, pausing to reach his hand out and gently rest it on the swollen bump. "Time Lords are different. Without Harry's mind aware enough to guide him through it, the sudden change could throw the baby into shock. This little one has been through an awful lot already and now he's being kicked out early—it's going to be hard on him. I'm going to need a few minutes to help him transition."

"Okay," she said, realizing what that meant for her. "So how am I supposed to stop the bleeding?"

"Boris is going to help you."

She felt rather dazed as he explained it and had to ask him to repeat some steps several times. He made it all sound so easy but, the more she thought about it, the more terrifying it seemed.

Boris was going to try to block the blood flow as much as he could, but the Doctor said she would need to clamp the artery if they were to really have a chance. Boris would single it out and stop it from slipping away while she would have to push her hand through the incision, into the empty womb, find the vessel that Boris was keeping still for her, and clamp it.

"I-I've got to put . . . my hand . . ." She felt her skin crawl just thinking about it. "Inside?"

"Donna, can you do this or not?" the Doctor asked sternly.

She nodded her head quickly. "Yeah."

"Good."

The Doctor then taught her how to use a strange device that looked like a tiny can of pepper spray but apparently worked as temporary glue. It was meant for situations similar to these where something needed to be held back for just a moment so the surgeon could focus on something else. She would need to apply it quickly to any bleeding areas to hold it back. The glue dissolved after about a minute, so he warned her that she might need to apply it more than once. And all the while she needed to pay attention to the clamped artery, to make sure it hadn't slipped or torn somewhere else.

"Once I have Ganbri stable, I'll hand him off to you," the Doctor finished. "Then you can get him clean and make sure he keeps breathing properly while I take care of Harry."

"You didn't tell me that name was for your baby," she muttered, nudging him with her elbow. "Now it's gonna be my fault when he gets older and asks why you gave him a girl's name."

"It's _not_!" the Doctor shouted in what Donna could only describe as a whine. "It's a boy's name.  _You_  said it was a boy's name."

"I'm just saying you don't get to pin it on me."

The rest of the preparations took nearly two hours. The Doctor explained every step of what he intended to do in great detail, reminding her of what he might need to ask of her. They had to stop a couple of times because Harry's skin would light up again and the Doctor would need to bring him back down before it got out of hand.

Before she knew what was happening she was pulling some kind of a white gown over her clothes and tucking her hair into a strange feeling cap that clung to her head as though it were alive. Sterilizing mists, masks, gloves. The Doctor even gave her a pair of glasses to wear, muttering something about arterial spray.

Donna stood beside the table, looking down at Harry's pale body while the Doctor prepared the incision site, feeling like she couldn't breathe. What the hell was she doing attending a surgery? Was she really standing there, about to assist in cutting open a living person and delivering a baby, when her only credential was that she was a friend? Couldn't they have fetched some alien friend of the Doctor's that would know what they were doing? She was suddenly very aware of how much she'd had to drink the night before.

"Are you ready?"

She looked across the table at the brown eyes gazing at her—so heavy and grim. If she couldn't get this right, her best friend in all the universe would lose a husband, or a child . . . or maybe both. Oh, how would she ever look him in the eye again if he lost them both?

"No," she answered honestly. "Are you?"

"No."

"Well, at least we're both on the same page."

She felt her stomach roll over when he began the cut. There wasn't quite as much blood as she expected but that did little to help her feel better. The Doctor went very slowly, and she followed his instruction to the letter, trying to get control over any bleeding as they went. Harry had very little to spare, so controlling the blood flow was the first priority.

For the most part she didn't see Boris at all but sometimes she would see a wisp of shadow pass over her hand. The baby didn't seem to like being pushed around so much and started kicking out, causing the mass of flesh to move about.

After what seemed like forever, the Doctor had finished his so very carefully created gateway. He'd cut just deep enough to get through the skin without breaking the baby's fluid sack, but that was the next step.

"Ready?"

Donna prepared the suction hose he had taught her to use. "Ready."

There was a lot more fluid than she had expected and it washed out of Harry like a wave. She used the hose to try and clean as much of it up as possible—the last thing they needed was for one of them to slip on a puddle and knock themselves out.

The Doctor's hands slid inside, his brows locked together in concentration as he worked. She could see the movement under the flesh as the baby panicked, unsure of what was happening.

"I can feel his fingers," the Doctor whispered and, amazingly, Donna saw a trace of a smile on his lips. "He's grabbing my hand."

Harry's skin took on that all too familiar glow, but the Doctor had said that would probably happen. He continued to work, and Donna kept an eye on it, just as she had been instructed. They expected Harry's body to panic a little but, as long as it didn't escalate, they didn't need to worry over it.

"This is the important part," the Doctor said quietly. "I'm going to separate the baby. You remember what to do?"

She swallowed hard and nodded her head. "How long do you think you'll be?"

"I don't know. He might have no trouble with the transition and stabilize immediately, or it could take several minutes."

The Doctor had explained to her how it worked, but most of it flew over her head. He's explained that Time Lords didn't recognize each other by physical traits because they changed so often. Instead they recognized each other by something the Doctor called an energy signature, kind of like recognizing a scent.

Right now, the baby was sharing Harry's energy and therefore his signature. The Doctor worried that, without Harry to guide him once they were separated, the baby would continue to try and stay connected to that signature and his body would not work for itself.

The Doctor's face turned a shade paler and he took a deep breath. "Please let this work."

The second the connection was severed, Harry's skin lit up like he was on fire and his eyes flew open. "Doctor, he's awake!" she shrieked.

The Doctor didn't answer, eyes set in complete determination. Her mind was a flurry of panic, but her body somehow continued with its tasks. She waited for the Doctor to pull the baby free from the womb, looking like nothing more than a wiggling bundle of blood in the brief flash that she saw him, and then she dove in.

Harry's skin had been so cold on the outside that she hadn't expected the surprising amount of heat she felt when she pushed her hand through the incision. The golden light was almost blinding, and Harry was beginning to writhe on the table. She couldn't find the artery. She felt the blood rushing freely from it, but she couldn't find the artery itself.

"Boris, where is it!?" she shouted, feeling around desperately. She felt something push against the side of her hand and allowed Boris to guide her until she found the severed vessel.

"Get it under control!" she heard the Doctor shout from behind her. "He  _will_  die!" She was extremely aware of the fact that she couldn't hear anything coming from the baby.

She pushed her other hand inside with the clamp. She needed to get a proper hold of the slippery vessel in order to seal it off, but she was terrified of being too rough with it and tearing it further down. The light grew brighter and she had to close her eyes as she finally got the clamp attached properly.

"Got it!" she cried happily.

She felt the Vashta Mereen rushing around her hands like a swarm of ants. Boris was setting to work with cleaning and removing the blood so that it could be re-entered into the body. If she cracked her eye open, she could see a bizarre red and black mist drifting out of the wound.

She pulled her hands out and found the adhesive the Doctor had instructed her to use, then dove back inside. She felt Boris nudging her here and there, guiding her to anywhere that had torn and begun to bleed.

She could feel Harry's hearts beating wildly through the tissue as his body squirmed. She even felt the vibration in his chest as he tried to vocalize something. The light almost felt like it was burning her it was so bright, and her head filled with a thousand strange images—a beautiful woman with short blonde hair standing in a field of red grass, a snowy mountain top beneath an orange sky, a little boy sitting in a tree with silver leaves.

"Harry, let him go!" the Doctor roared. Suddenly he was standing right beside her and, when she looked up, she saw that the baby was glowing just as brightly, kicking in fright. "He's right here. You don't need to hold on!"

"Doctor, what's happening?"

The Doctor looked at her with an expression in his eyes that she hoped never to see. "Take the baby, Donna."

"What? No!"

The baby wasn't crying yet. He was just sitting in the Doctor's hands, kicking away pitifully and with less enthusiasm every second. He wasn't breathing yet. She wasn't supposed to take the baby until he was breathing.

"I said take him!"

It almost felt like something pushed her back and it frightened her. She didn't know when she had started crying, but there were tears running down her face when she pulled her hands free and reached out. Suddenly she was standing there helpless as Ganbri wiggled feebly in her grasp. All she could think to do was to hold him up against her chest and rub his back, breathlessly begging him to make it. Every few seconds she heard a tiny, encouraging gasp but it seemed like his lungs just couldn't figure out how to work alone.

"He just doesn't know what's happening. He's just following his instincts," the Doctor explained quickly. "He feels the connection trying to break and he thinks it's because the baby's in trouble."

"What, you mean Harry's doing this!?"

The Doctor went straight back to work on Harry, his hands flying at a speed she couldn't keep track of. "You let him go," he kept repeating as he worked. "Listen to me, Harry, you're gonna kill him!"

The Doctor hands re-emerged with the clamp. He'd managed to seal off the artery. He moved almost as if he were in a fury, ripping his gloves and his mask off, and putting a hand on either side of Harry's face. She felt a ripple through the air, then another even stronger, and another.

"Let go!"

The light burst bright and suddenly died. The baby coughed in her ear and she felt a fresh rush of tears when the first cries of the newborn rang through the air. Harry's body stopped moving and his eyes were closed once more, but the monitors showed clearly that his hearts were still beating.

Finally, Donna looked at the Doctor, with a sheen of sweat on his brow and panting as hard as if he had just run a mile. He looked up at her with wide eyes as if he was in complete shock.

"It worked," he gasped, his face breaking into a grin at the sound of the baby's cry. "Blimey, it worked! He broke the connection."

She hurried over, never thinking the sound of a child screaming his head off would ever bring her so much joy. Ganbri was still a mess but, oh, he was so beautiful!

"Look at him!" she sobbed, pushing the wriggling baby into his father's hands.

"Oh, thank God," the Doctor gasped. "Look, his body's working on its own! He's got his own—"

Then suddenly he stopped dead, staring down at the child with wide eyes. For a moment she thought something was wrong with the baby, but Ganbri continued to cry and wiggle just as he had before.

"What?" she asked fearfully. "What is it?"

"Nothing," the Doctor answered quietly, but she saw his eyes flick to a set of strange symbols painted on the back of the door for a second. "Sorry . . . I was just saying he's got his own signature now."


	76. Ganbri

_Tokrah!_

It had been a moment of childish weakness. He knew that if he ever survived this mess, his father would never let him forget it. He would forever suffer the jokes made about the day Ganbri got hurt and cried out in fear.

Of course, he hadn't meant to call out. His Banni wouldn't have even heard his panicked thoughts, but the strong telepathic connection he'd always shared with his Tokrah made it impossible to keep his burst of fear hidden.

Ganbri stared down at his chest in complete and utter shock as the blood poured out. He saw the look on Sevil's face as he stumbled, watched the light fade from her eyes as he fell. It didn't hurt as much as he thought it would have but, for some reason, he was screaming.

Suddenly he realized that in the stories his parents told him about the prisoner that helped them escape, they never once mentioned who made it out alive. He felt a pair of hands grab him by the shoulders and turn him over onto his back.

"It's alright," that old and comforting voice panted. "I've got you."

Tokrah didn't lie. They'd never been able to keep much from each other and Tokrah tended to just tell the truth anyway. A lot of the fear scurried away once Ganbri knew his father was beside him, but it still didn't banish the nagging question in his head.

"You would have told me, right?" he managed to gasp, finding it surprisingly hard to talk.

"Shh," his father answered, slipping his arms beneath Ganbri's so that he could drag him across the floor. "You're gonna be fine. I've had worse."

That wasn't really an answer, but he supposed it had been a hard question to ask. Tokrah's chest was still swollen and ripe—it seemed impossible to think that the bizarre little creature beneath that skin had once been him. He wasn't born yet in his parents' time. They might not even know his name.

Tokrah gave another great heave to drag him a few more feet and suddenly the pain hit. It ripped through his body like flame and he screamed, writhing against it. His hands shot up instinctively and gripped hold of his Tokrah's arms, all kinds of strange sounds escaping his mouth as his feet kicked against the floor and tried to aid their movement.

"Dad, am I dying?" His voice came out in a strange whimper. Embarrassing. While his mind was scolding him for being so cowardly there was another, larger part that had reverted completely back to being a child—back when his faith in his fathers was absolute.

They could do anything. They were superheroes, kings, and gods. Their names were praised and feared throughout the stars. When disaster struck, the Doctor and the Master would appear in their blue police box and save the day. And back home, the two of them were called miracle workers, visiting the ill and the wounded who called out to them and helping them get better. All through his childhood, Ganbri had truly believed them to be capable of anything.

That child in him emerged now, crying out for his fathers to save him, just like they saved all those other people they didn't even know.

"You're not dying," Tokrah answered gruffly.

But he could see the trail of blood they were leaving behind as he was dragged away from the enemy and was all too aware that every drop of it had come from inside him. As much as he wished his childhood ideas had been true, he'd learned the hard way that his fathers were not as invincible as he always thought. Sometimes they couldn't save people. Sometimes they had to choose not to.

"You would have told me, right?" he gasped again, feeling the fear infecting his every thought now. "I mean, you—you would, wouldn't you?"

Tokrah tried to hide it but he felt the emotion slip out of him, saw the look in his eyes. Suddenly he let go and hurriedly pulled at something around his neck, placing it around Ganbri's instead. Ganbri immediately felt a flood of soothing calm and feelings of love. It felt just like when Banni would calm him or felt particularly affectionate. It didn't answer his question, but it did make him feel better.

Tokrah wouldn't leave him behind. Tokrah would have told him if he died in this place, would have stopped him from ever going back.

" _Listen_ ," he could hear the memory of Banni's voice ringing. " _This sort of thing . . . anything can happen._ "

Had that been it? Had that been his warning? When he saw his Banni that night, they were already hiding in a room that he hadn't even created yet—they'd already lived this. Maybe Banni had watched Ganbri die and that was all he could bring himself to give as warning? Banni always had been a little cryptic that way.

" _Take it from someone who's made the mistake and tell Annie how you feel._ "

Oh, Annie . . . Why hadn't he followed that advice? Every time he thought about telling her, his lips simply didn't obey. There was always more time. A night when she was in a better mood, or a night with a more romantic setting, hell, even a night when he hadn't eaten onion rings an hour beforehand. He always just sort of hoped that Annabelle knew and, one day, she would decide if she felt the same.

"Listen to me," Tokrah growled. "Hey! Snap out of it!"

They left Annabelle at home. It was too dangerous to take her. Brilliant as she was, she'd always had a bit of trouble grasping how delicate time was and thought it best to leave without her. Ganbri was immensely grateful for that decision now. He'd jumped into this whole mess too naïve and eager to prove himself with no idea what he was really stepping into.

"You're not going to die. You're going to regenerate."

Oh? Well, that was good news.

"It's scary, I know," Tokrah continued, gasping and grunting as he dragged Ganbri's dead weight. "But you'll be alright. Trust me, I've done it a hundred times."

But he could hear it, echoing from his father's head—he was afraid too. Poor Tokrah did try, but he always did a remarkably good job at undoing all of Banni's hard work when it came to secrecy. After all, that's how this all started.

Banni wasn't home. Some old friend of his had called to say he was certain he'd caught a fairy or some nonsense and Banni had gone to investigate. Ganbri was getting some lessons on maintaining the terraforming engine from his Tokrah when he heard the crying—a baby, somewhere in the room, helpless and alone.

Ganbri knew it wasn't real. Tokrah's mind was echoing into his own again, the way it often did. Tokrah’s eyes had grown wide and he'd brought a hand up to his own chest, feeling the flatness of it and looking panicked.

"It's okay, Dad," he'd assured him, as he had countless times before. "I'm right here, look."

"I can't feel him anymore," Tokrah answered breathlessly. "What's happened? Is he alright?"

"Just fine. You're looking at him. Blinking, breathing, everything."

Sometimes it was enough just to tell Tokrah that there was nothing to worry about. But not that day. He panicked, his skin turned to light, he couldn't remember where they were or when. All his poor Tokrah knew was that he expected to feel a baby attached to his chest and found nothing there.

"Look, look," he remembered saying urgently, pulling at his father's shirt. "Look at the scar. See?"

He never knew much about the circumstances surrounding his own birth except that it had happened in the TARDIS and while in hiding. He knew his parents were in the middle of a great battle with someone called the Nightmare and that someone known as the Star had gone under cover as a prisoner to help them escape. He knew that his Tokrah's illness and the way it lashed out during Ganbri's birth was what had created the unusually strong link between them and been the cause of Ganbri's condition.

The day of his birth, his Banni burned up one of his regenerations and pushed the energy into his Tokrah. Then, a few hours later, Tokrah's body flew into survival mode while Ganbri was being born and pumped his newborn body full of time energy, trying desperately to hold the connection between them. The extreme excess amounts of time energy had affected him.

His condition occasionally caused problems—bursts of light or other sudden uses of time energy if he was frightened or stressed, which could be difficult to explain at times. However, the overexposure during birth had caused his body to lose its ability to simply harbour time energy, instead he absorbed it like a sponge until some of it had to be released. It was useful for healing purposes if someone got hurt and he'd learned a couple of other tricks over time.

He used it at that moment to make his own skin glow, that his Tokrah might recognize him as the child he was looking for. He thought it would calm him down but, instead, his father looked at him with fearful eyes.

"If she knows," he muttered quietly. "She won't stop until you're dead. You need to get off the ship."

If it hadn't been for the gate between their minds that so easily opened up, Ganbri might never have known what his Tokrah was talking about. The images surged in without permission and he saw the Nightmare's ship, the happy family he'd grown up with bloodied and armed, and, finally, he saw himself.

That simple image was what brought everything crashing down. When Tokrah recovered from his attack, Ganbri pretended that nothing unusual had happened. But he began asking questions. Banni didn't seem happy at all to be asked about the battle against the Nightmare. It turned into an argument in which he complained that his parents always held back information about the days surrounding his birth. Eventually Tokrah's eyes grew heavy and he took a deep breath.

"Harry, don't," Banni said quickly, instantly looking tense. "Just leave it. He's too young."

Ganbri didn't hear what he expected to hear. Tokrah didn't tell him that Ganbri had joined them in the battle. Instead he admitted that the Nightmare had been his own daughter—Ganbri's half sister. He told the story of his first child and how he tried to erase her existence in a moment of anger and the war that followed.

Ganbri stared at his father in absolute horror, finding it impossible to imagine that he could have done such a thing. He'd been warned that both his parents had done some terrible things that they might one day have to face again and that his Tokrah especially struggled with some of the things he'd done. But he never really believed them. That was just something they said when they didn't want to talk about something or to use it as a warning. Surely, it was some kind of joke?

He tore through the TARDIS library, looking for books on Gallifreyan history or anything that mentioned the Doctor and the Master. He found page after page of black deeds—planets conquered, civilizations wiped out, people being controlled and manipulated like puppets. His Tokrah had been a legend in all the wrong ways.

When Banni appeared in the library door, his arms crossed and his eyes sad, Ganbri only felt fury to know that these secrets had been kept for so long. They'd mentioned mistakes and sins and that the two had fought each other for centuries, but they never told him to what extent.

"And you?" he found himself shouting across the library. "What have you done? Did you kill innocent people and wipe out entire planets too?"

He'd said it in anger. He hadn't expected to see his quiet old Banni nod his head.

"I told you our home planet burned," Banni whispered. "I burned it. I did those things because I hoped it would save more lives than destroy but, yes, I've done them."

Ganbri couldn't believe what he was hearing. Every shining light he'd ever placed on his fathers was suddenly extinguished. His whole life he'd been proud to think of his parents as heroes and suddenly he was learning that, once, they were monsters.

"I'm sure you can understand why we've been avoiding this conversation."

Banni sat down and told him the long story. He explained how he and Tokrah had been driven apart when they were young and what happened because of it. Banni started a family and Tokrah's illness drove him to do monstrous things. The death his sister, Qhoya, finally pushed him over the edge and Banni had to kill him in self-defence. They raged war against each other for six hundred years, leaving many dead in their wake.

Banni promised that he tried to do good things, just like he did now, and that Tokrah was ill and could not be held accountable for what he did in his madness. It suddenly was beginning to make sense why any of the family or his parents' old friends would talk about how far they'd come or how much they'd changed and why sometimes the two Time Lords were treated like delicate china dolls.

His fathers didn't argue with him when he said he wanted to spend a few days away. He fled to his older sister, Jenny, his Banni's daughter from before he was married. Ganbri had been quite close with her since he was young, and he knew that she would help him sort things out.

She helped him to research his fathers’ past lives and talked to him about not judging them too harshly. "They've been alive for nearly a thousand years, and Harry was very sick for most of that," she explained calmly. "It would be unreasonable to expect that they  _hadn't_  made mistakes."

Once Ganbri got over the initial anger, it became a little easier to see the reasoning behind it. Much of his fathers' behaviour began to make more sense as well as their strictness when it came to certain moral codes. But there was still more, it seemed there was always more, that his fathers hadn't told him.

He told Jenny about seeing an image of himself on the Nightmare's ship and, after a few sisterly warnings, she agreed to help him find out the truth. He knew that the battle legends consisted of three armies: the Nightmare's, the Ginu'uns, and the Star's. They both agreed that Godforge would be the best place to start as the Star was a part of their religious teachings and therefore the easiest to get information on.

The time they travelled to was only three years after the Battle of Fire, when the Star first appeared to the people of Godforge and led them to freedom. They expected to speak to people with the Star fresh in their minds and eager to speak about it, but they did not expect the welcome they received.

The moment they set foot in the stifling heat, Ganbri was well aware of the odd looks he was getting. He thought perhaps it was simply because they weren't Haephsian that they stood out and drew attention. But, within two minutes, a thin Haephsian merchant hurried up to them and grasped Ganbri's hands tightly.

"Oh, thank you," he said quickly, voice raspy and full of emotion. "Thank you! Oh, thank you! It's this way!"

Before Ganbri knew what was happening, the Haephsian was leading him through a quickly growing crowd. More and more eyes turned toward them, and a steadily rising din of whispers was filling the air.

"He's been working to help restore the Temple sculptures," the Haephsian explained quickly. "It was an accident. Just a foolish mistake. He only slipped."

The Haephsian pushed aside the entrance flap of a large tent, revealing a workshop inside. There was a Haephsian lying on the floor with a crowd of others around him, a large gash in his belly that was quickly spilling forth his blood. There was a crowd standing in the doorway behind them, pushing to get a better look without wanting to enter the tent.

"Please," the Haephsian that led them there begged. "He is good. His worships are strong and beautifully made. He serves you faithfully. He serves the Temple. We all do."

Ganbri stood frozen for a moment, unsure of what to do. The heat seemed to be filling his brain and the dozens of eyes staring at him made his hearts race uncomfortably. He did the only thing he could think to do when faced with someone wounded so badly and summoned forth the excess energy his body built up. His skin glowed bright and filled the room and the healing light reached out to the Haephsian on the floor.

The wound closed up before their eyes and the tent erupted with the noise of praise and thanks.

"We knew you would return," voices said happily. "We knew the gods did not forget us."

It all felt strange and wrong. Ganbri backed away from the crowd a bit and was thankful to see that they did not push forward. "I don't understand," he muttered quietly, looking specifically to the Haephsian that had brought them here. "I only came to ask about stories of the Star."

"Ah, yes, of course," the Haephsian responded with a smile, bowing his head. "The Temple teaches. Do not worry. The young ones may not know your face as we do, but they know the tales." Then his face fell a bit and he gestured towards Jenny as he added quietly. "I do not, however, think that they teach of your servant . . ."

"His  _servant_?" Jenny crossed her arms.

"Apologies," the Haephsian replied quickly. "I meant Shieldmaiden. Shall I fetch the Priest to speak with you?"

Ganbri stood helplessly for a moment and was certain he had left his mouth hanging open. "No," he said finally after receiving a sharp elbow to the ribs from Jenny. "No, thank you, that won't be necessary. You're, um, friend here should be fine . . . Uh, keep up the good work everyone."

He grabbed Jenny's hand and fled the scene. He hoped to find a quiet corner to talk but quickly realized that they would find no privacy here. Hundreds of eyes moved with them and watched eagerly. Finally, he pushed his way inside another work tent.

"Excuse me, everyone, I need this space for a moment," he announced as politely as he could.

It felt absolutely insane to walk into a random person's workspace and expect them to hand it over, but that's exactly what happened. Bowed heads and whispered words of praise rushed past him as the workers cleared the room.

"Praise to the Star," he heard someone mutter just before the tent flap closed again.

The second they were alone, the sense of panic in him suddenly burst. "Why are they calling me the Star?"

"Well, that's your name, isn't it?" Jenny said with a merry grin on her face.

"No, my name is Ganbri," he answered irritably. "Banni said he named me  _after_  the Star."

"Ganbri, we both know that Dad's a liar," she sighed, playing with her hair as if nothing important were happening. "You said so yourself, you saw yourself on the Nightmare's ship in Harry's mind. You were  _there_. Now you show up here and everybody is calling you the Star, so I think that means you  _are_  the Star. Why else wouldn't Dad and Harry tell you anything about the person you're named for?"

It made sense. He couldn't deny that.

Ganbri had been warned his entire life about the dangers of time travel. Don't travel to your own past, don't be in the same place at the same time twice, don't go anywhere that something very important was supposed to happen in case you change it. This would break every one of those rules and yet it seemed like he had no choice. It had already happened.

"I'm supposed to go back," he said quietly, barely believing the words coming out of his mouth. "I'm supposed to save them."

"We could stop the Nightmare," Jenny added excitedly. "If we did it right, they'd never  _need_  saving."

And so it began. Jenny worked out the plan as she had the expertise when it came to military action and they involved Nista because of his experience on the battlefield. They tracked down as much information as they could about the events surrounding the Nightmare's war and borrowed equipment from the TARDIS's long forgotten armoury.

They needed to go to Godforge while the Nightmare still controlled it and lead the people in their uprising. Ganbri hated the idea of letting the people continue to believe he was a god but Jenny convinced him that it was for the best. If they wouldn't follow him, they might never turn against their oppressor. It felt rotten on his conscience, but surely Jenny was right?

The Battle of Fire was bloody and terrifying. All he had to do was use a little time energy and glow in order to gets the priests' cooperation, feeling a bit guilty as they stood in awe of his 'starlight'. He was quickly suited in armour that the priests claimed was sacred but he was mostly just happy to have a helmet to cover his face when he met the Nightmare. It was made of the same odd bronze as the Temple, seeming to glow and ripple. When he let any time energy escape, the armour simply erupted with light, like a flame of its own.

"Lead us," the priests chanted in unison when they presented the armour. "And we will be your fire."

The people of Godforge turned on their tyrant ruler with little more than a word, so great was their faith in him. Many died. Ganbri had never killed a man before that day and he was a little frightened by how easily it came. He healed who he could as long as his excess energy lasted, which only strengthened their belief in him and caused them to fight harder.

And the moment he finally saw her face, the daughter of his father and the murderer of his brothers, he didn't feel the rage he expected. He stood in the doorway of her chamber, blood dripping from the blade on his staff and sticking to the bottom of his boots. She stared at him with wide eyes, delirious with fear, and she breathed so hard it sounded like she was already dying.

She looked like she was just a little girl.

Ganbri thought of Jenny, still fighting for him just a few feet away, and realized that he shared the same connection with Kahlia. She looked different than a Time Lord, from her mother's blood he supposed, but she was his sister nonetheless.

If he hadn't been wearing the helmet, maybe she would have seen the pity in his eyes. Maybe it could have gone differently. But that suit of armour that glowed like fire and bore the symbol of a god on its chest was all that she could see, and she acted to survive.

He didn't see where the knife came from, he only saw it fly through the air towards him. He managed to move quickly enough that the knife bounced harmlessly off his shoulder plate but Kahlia's was already moving.  _Running_. There was a door for an escape pod just on the other side of the room and she was making a break for it. He'd hesitated when he shouldn't have, and he couldn't let her escape.

Ganbri flicked a switch on the staff's handle and felt the mechanics inside whir and turn at incredible speeds. Access to technology that could make something bigger on the inside opened a whole world of possibilities for a simple staff. The blade vanished and a trigger appeared under his finger. Suddenly it was easy again and he didn't hesitate.

Kahlia was in the pod's doorway, turning around to slam the button that closed it, when he pulled the trigger. It knocked her off her feet, leaving a gaping hole where her stomach would have been. She looked up at him, sputtering as she tried to get up, and he saw nothing but fury in those eyes.

Ganbri knew he had to wait for her attempt to regenerate before he could shoot again and know that the job was done, but the door to the pod slipped shut. He'd missed his chance, but he couldn't deny that a part of him felt relief as that pod launched into the black abyss of space. The soldiers of her devastated army that still remained under her influence or control retreated while those left behind seemed to be waking from a bad dream.

It was while they helped the people of Godforge climb out of the battle's ashes that they learned how to get close to her. Many of Kahlia's soldiers that had been left behind had been so far under her telepathic influence that they couldn't even remember the battle. Ganbri knew that Time Lords could achieve great power when it came to telepathy, but never on that scale. A bit of digging and a few tests quickly revealed Kahlia's secret.

Her soldiers were all given a genetic imprint. Her very own blood and life was fused with theirs—not enough to make any physical changes, but enough to make them extremely susceptible to her control. Every single soldier on her ship would be carrying her genetic code.

After that it all just fell into place. They got a hold of one of the old gravity manipulator shields that his Uncle Shaun had created and reprogrammed it to respond to a specific gene code, then used Ganbri's blood as the template. Nothing sharing any of Ganbri's genes would be able to pass through it—not his fathers, not Kahlia, and not a single imprinted soldier on the Nightmare's ship.

Banni had always told him that he first met the Star in a prison cell. He was just an ordinary man, locked up with the rest of them. And that was exactly who Ganbri intended to be. They had a plan in place, equipment gathered, and were ready to move out when Nista mentioned the room.

He'd been combing through every detail they had and pointed out that the room Ganbri was born in had been built specifically for the day his parents needed to hide in it. No one had ever seen the inside of the room as they'd never been able to get past the locks, but they'd heard it was equipped for the surgery his Banni had needed to do and for them to live in temporarily while they recovered.

"So the room was built by someone who already knew what would happen and was preparing for it," Nista explained. "I'm pretty sure that's us."

Ganbri remembered being told about his fathers' first trip together to Disneyplanet and how they returned centuries later. He'd heard the story many times from anyone who had been there and always with great fondness. But the important thing was that the TARDIS would be there on the first night it was stolen. Nista wouldn't know how to program the TARDIS and Jenny was worried that she would be seen by the older Doctor, as he would certainly recognize her.

So Jenny explained to Ganbri what he must do and what he must make sure the room included. She listed all sorts of things that he never would have thought of adding, including dampening fields and a time-based lock so that the room wouldn't open until it was needed.

He only got his first taste of what he was up against when his Banni grabbed him in the crowd. Wounded, desperate, angry—it was quite shocking to see him that way. Ganbri reminded himself that he needed to expect some rather terrible things in the future and then tried to push it from his mind.

It was utterly bizarre to see the TARDIS looking like anything that wasn't a police box and the inside was even stranger. It was all new and clean inside—the best piece of evidence he had to tell him that Banni hadn't had it long. He programmed the safe room, just as Jenny had instructed, and even took a moment to sign the door with his name and the symbol of the Haephsian Sun. One last, proud touch to let his fathers know that he had been manipulating their fate all along.

Finally, it was time to head to the Nightmare's ship. Nista took their weapons and other tools and headed for the forgotten bowels of the ship, where he could hide away until Ganbri summoned him. Jenny said a quick goodbye and returned to Godforge to prepare the Star's army for the day that it was needed. They decided it would be best to make their move when the Ginu'un fleet arrived, distracting the Nightmare as much as possible.

And Ganbri, after ensuring he had everything he needed, wandered the ship until he was found and pretended he was nothing but a lowly thief. His captor made a comment to the prison guard about him being caught prowling the halls and the name Prowler stuck. He felt rather cocky about the whole thing at first—if only his fathers could see him now, playing puppeteer.

That pride was quickly destroyed once he realized what kind of a world he had gotten himself into. His first day in captivity, a man in one of the other cells exploded. Apparently, he'd been taken for his skills as a weapons designer, but he had prepared for capture with a bomb strapped to his chest and a dead man's switch in his hand. On that day, he finally fell asleep and his finger slipped off the trigger, leaving a scorched and splattered hole where his cell had been and killing a guard and two other prisoners with the debris.

Ganbri watched in horror as the other prisoners were tortured. The little man in the cell next to him seemed to always get it the worst because the guards enjoyed frightening him; they even called him Mouse because of how easy it was to hurt or scare him. On his second day, one man was dragged away for an interrogation and never returned.

Of course, Ganbri had heard stories of the atrocities people committed and that the Nightmare had been a monster in her own ways, but he still hadn't expected this. He hadn't expected the way it vibrated in his bones when he heard a fist meet flesh, or the way the stink of mingling fresh and old blood made his stomach curl. The fear in the eyes of those around him and every terrified whimper he heard from Mouse dug under his skin like another dagger.

On top of it all, he needed to keep himself calm or else he might accidentally release time energy and give himself away. He began pacing in his cell just to give him something to do other than sit there and taste the stale copper in the air, to think about anything other than what would happen when Banni was taken.

The day they shot Merrin in the head just about tore him in half. She was on her knees, sobbing as she begged the Mechanic to cooperate, shaking from head to toe. Then suddenly it was over. One movement of a finger and a loud bang and Merrin was dead, just because they could kill her.

That was the night he connected with Brody. The Ginu'un was clever and very observant, enough so to have worked out that the Prowler was no simple thief and that his shield wasn't working on his fellow prisoners. All Brody had to do was ask and Ganbri's mind leapt out to him like a drowning man.

They spent almost the entire night linked, sharing all their secrets and fears. Ganbri told him about the complexities of his rescue mission, how terrified he was to see his father in such a place, and of the guilt that was plaguing him as he stood by while prisoners were murdered.

Brody was kind and understanding and quick to realize that, though Ganbri looked like a full-grown man, for his own species he was still only a child. A twenty-seven-year-old trying to pull this kind of stunt would have been unheard of on Gallifrey. Brody promised to help him when the time came and welcomed a connection any time Ganbri needed support.

Brody became his rock, the only one who could keep him calm or remind him of his true purpose. When Banni finally arrived, Brody took charge and made sure the other prisoners didn't turn on him. He helped Ganbri to keep control of himself after seeing his father's battered body and helped him remember the true villains when he lost his temper.

Ganbri couldn't help feeling angry with Banni sometimes—cocky and overconfident, as always. Banni enjoyed inspiring people's faith in him, to the point where a simple word could get him what he wanted. He swaggered onto that ship, bathing in the fear of his captors and showing off in front of the prisoners so that, when the time came, no one would question him.

Ganbri had seen cities fall to that faith. Entire populations of people that did nothing to save themselves because they had heard the Doctor and the Master had come to save them and then died when they failed.

The Mechanic's faith in the Star infuriated him. After all the planning and work he'd put into this, with him standing right there in front of her and telling her they needed to escape, her faith blinded her from seeing that her saviour was already there. Her stubborn faith in him could get her killed.

He knew full well that, when his Banni returned with that smug look on his face, someone was going to pay for his arrogance. The Doctor wanted to remind the Nightmare that he was the Oncoming Storm so that her faith in his power would weaken her. But Ganbri had seen her cruelty and her thirst. When Mouse suffered for his father's ego, he was so furious with him that he couldn't think to do anything but show him how vulnerable he really was—to show the others that the Doctor was no less mortal than the man with a slit throat on the floor.

It wasn't until after Brody had to scream at him to stop that he realized most of his anger was with himself. How arrogant and childish he had been to think he could just swan in on his fathers' pasts and make everything better.

Banni and Tokrah were certainly not perfect. They made mistakes, they did bad things, and sometimes they failed to save someone. But at least they were aware of their shortcomings. When the battles ended and the eyes of strangers were gone, they often spent a day or two with each other in near silence—humble, reflective, facing the weight of their mistakes. It made them fight harder the next time.

As his Tokrah dragged him away from the Nightmare’s soldiers, bleeding and preparing to regenerate for the first time, Ganbri supposed that this was what he deserved in the end. Man falls to his hubris, only realizing his mistakes when it was too late. He thought he could alter the flow of time itself to prove to his fathers that he could save lives too, without falling prey to the same darkness that they did. Instead he simply made it happen.

The people of Godforge went to war in his name and many had and would die for him. Brody had taken a near deadly wound simply to keep Ganbri's identity safe. He had told Jenny to attack while wearing the Star's armour simply to strike fear into the Nightmare's heart, without even thinking what an enormous target that made his sister. Nista charged into this fight without a second thought, simply because Ganbri had asked him to.

He realized there was no darkness that enveloped his fathers, only that they walked a path with a million shades of grey. How was he supposed to know when the shadows became too dark?

Something happened and Ganbri felt his Tokrah get ripped away from him, felt a stab of pain rush from his father's mind to his own. He didn't know what was going on. All he knew was that he could hear the thunderous sound of boots as the Nightmare's soldiers continued their approach and that it suddenly was very cold. Why was it so cold?

He wished Annie was there. Her hands were so warm.


	77. Harry

There was a moment of loneliness—a silence without comfort and an emptiness without warmth. For one brief second, Harry thought that maybe all was lost. Maybe he was alone now. Maybe he was dead. Had he died and left his poor Doctor all alone in that dreadful cold?

He didn't know this room, but the soothing hum of the TARDIS told him he was home. Harry listened to her calming songs as his eyes adjusted to the darkness and his mind tried to fit the pieces together. He was in so much pain that it was hard to think and it was so very cold. Where was that other heartbeat? Where was that little voice that whispered to him?

Then he felt it answer—a tiny soul, once a part of his own, reaching out to him in the darkness. He rolled his head to look on his other side and instantly felt at peace.

There was enough light in the room to see that the Doctor's glasses were sitting up on his head, his arms protectively wrapped around the tiny form resting against his chest. His eyes were closed, his breathing steady, and the quiet rumble of a snore told Harry that the Doctor was lost to the world right now. He only ever snored when he was exhausted.

The bed they were lying in was more than big enough for two and the Doctor had chosen to climb onto the side against the wall, probably so that he could sit up in the corner and let the walls hold him there, just like he was now. He had probably intended to stay awake and just been unable to, but the baby didn't seem to have that problem.

Ganbri was awake, though it seemed barely so. He blinked slowly at Harry through the dark, lips pursing outward and releasing a spurt of drool along with a tired sounding splutter.

"Hi," Harry said, his voice coming out in a raspy sounding whisper.

He lifted his hand to reach out to him, surprised by how very heavy his arm felt, and slipped his finger into the baby's hand. Ganbri squeezed tight without hesitation, tiny fingernails scraping Harry's skin. It was hard to talk and his throat felt dry, so he let his mind do the talking for him. The tiny little being seemed more comfortable with that kind of communication anyway, after all the time they'd spent just sending each other thoughts.

Harry watched as Ganbri wiggled delightfully at the familiar sensation, squeezing his tiny fist around Harry's finger and releasing it repeatedly. He was waking up, excited and moving. He kicked his tiny feet out and the Doctor's head shot upright, smacking rather loudly against the wall behind him.

"M'wake," he slurred without opening his eyes, then he sighed and gave the baby a couple of pats on the back with his hand. "Shh, shh, jus'little longer."

Harry opened his mouth to say something, but he couldn't seem to form any words. Instead, he slipped his finger free from Ganbri's grip and moved his hand to rest on the Doctor's arm.

The Doctor jumped awake with a start, earning a frightened whimper from the baby in his arms. Harry watched as the Doctor blinked the sleep from his eyes.

"Harold?"

Harry opened his mouth again and managed to croak out another "Hi". It seemed to be the only word he could manage right now, seeing as it was just a slightly manipulated exhale.

"Oh, Harry! Hi!" the Doctor breathed out with an odd sort of laugh. He moved very quickly but without seeming to know exactly what he wanted to do. After a bit of fidgeting and a lot of little words of fussing, the Doctor managed to move so that he was laying down right next to Harry with the baby nestled carefully in between them.

"Look at him," the Doctor whispered excitedly, taking Harry's hand in his own and kissing the back of it before guiding it to feel the soft fuzz on the baby's head. "He's beautiful. He's so good, Harry. He doesn't fuss or anything. Look what you made!"

Despite how cold Harry was, he felt a bit warmer to hear the Doctor's voice full of such happiness. He kept touching the baby and then touching Harry, back and forth like he just had to keep making sure they were both there. He could see the Doctor grinning uncontrollably in the dark and could tell from the way he breathed and occasionally sniffed that he very likely had happy tears in his eyes.

It was so very difficult to talk but he wanted so much just to keep his Doctor smiling.

"I . . . always make," he was raspy and odd sounding, but he managed to force the words out. "All the . . . best stuff."

The Doctor laughed a little. "Yes, you do," he agreed quickly, and began peppering Harry's face with kisses. "I missed you."

When their lips met, Harry could feel the emotions rolling off the Doctor and it put him at peace to know that he was doing so well. He was definitely exhausted and still carrying plenty of stress, but he was just full to the brim with happiness.

For a while they just laid there, nearly delirious with joy and exhaustion, kissing and touching each other's faces, marvelling over Ganbri's tiny fingers and toes. It was hard to believe that any of it was really happening. If he could go back a hundred years and tell his past self that he would wind up here, he never would have believed it.

At one point the Doctor was talking to Ganbri, just nonsense little things about the places they would take him, when he added with an odd sounding chuckle. "And one day, you are gonna be in  _so_  much trouble when you get home."

It made Harry laugh, even though it sent spikes of pain through his chest. He could only imagine the look on the Doctor's face when that day finally caught up to them and Ganbri came home from a war. It was a terrifying thought that would haunt them for years to come, but for now they would just have to laugh about it.

"He's got your temper, you know," the Doctor added quietly. "Little bugger used that shield of his to hit me against a wall to express his disapproval of me."

Harry remembered the look in those dark eyes that he'd seen on the Nightmare's ship and completely believed it. He thought of what it felt like to be that young and felt so very sympathetic towards his son and the trials he would one day face. Then he thought that even a person with the easiest life in the world would feel the need to launch the Doctor against the wall if they had him for a parent.

"I heard that," the Doctor said with a chuckle, lightly smacking his hand against Harry's shoulder.

They laid quietly for a while, just enjoying the first calm silence they'd had in days. He felt the Doctor's high coming down and that infectious sadness of his wiggling its way back in. Harry felt around for his hand and quickly entwined their fingers, giving an encouraging squeeze in lieu of words. What could possibly make him sad at a moment like this?

"I think it's my fault," the Doctor said quickly and without resistance.

Harry sighed and felt his hearts sink a little. How in the world had that mad mind of his dragged him down that path already?

"You weren't there," he blurted out almost eagerly. "You didn't see how I acted—the kind of behaviour I encouraged. And if  _I_  had gone back for him—"

"Doctor."

There was a short pause during which he listened carefully to the Doctor's breathing and opened up to any projected feelings. The poor man was just exhausted. He was full of happiness, guilt, worry, and so much stress that his extremely overworked, wounded, and sleep-deprived self couldn't quite handle it.

"What?"

Harry felt a bit bad for saying it, but now was certainly not the time to have that sort of conversation. "Shut up."

There was an odd sound that escaped the Doctor, almost like a chuckle but almost like a whimper. Harry wished he could explain to him but it was so hard to talk. He knew that the Doctor just needed to sleep and unwind. He would feel so much better if he just slept.

He squeezed the Doctor's hand and tried to communicate telepathically what he meant. It was all coming out jumbled and nonsensical as it was so difficult to focus but his Doctor knew him well. Surely, he would understand.

Harry woke a few times during the night. He caught brief glimpses of the world moving around him and felt emotions from a year ago drifting through the air. He could feel a dark anger stirring about and recognized it as his past Doctor. It took a moment to remember that, somewhere else on the ship, there was another version of himself that had just been shot in the leg. He didn't know that the Doctor had left him that night, but he could feel him now, prowling the ship like a black cloud, probably trying to calm himself.

Later he woke to find himself alone in the bed. The Doctor was slowly pacing around the room with Ganbri swaddled in a blanket and nestled against his chest. A moment of fear passed through him when he saw a golden light glowing from the Doctor's hand as it patted the baby's back before he remembered that it was normal. Newborn Time Lords required time energy to fuel their bodies, not food. He listened for a while as the Doctor hummed a lullaby from Gallifrey during the feeding and quickly found himself falling back asleep.

"Daddy?"

The Doctor was gone, and an old ghost lay in his place. Berran's eyes stared wide and curious, a tiny smile playing on his lips. He wasn't real, Harry reminded himself. He couldn't be real.

The little boy stretched his hand out and slipped it into Harry's, feeling just as warm and soft as it had when he was alive. "You better?"

"Berran," he breathed out. "Don't."

But Berran only smiled bigger with that playful twinkle in his eye. "Don't what?"

Harry couldn't bring himself to pull his hand away. It wasn't real. That warmth was imagined, the gentle curl of Berran's fingers only remembered, and yet he couldn't let go.

"Go away," he answered. "Please. Berran, you have to go away." At least it was easier to talk now. It was still rather breathy and odd sounding, but at least he could form words.

Berran looked at him with a very hurt look in his eyes. "Why?"

"You're dead."

It felt like a knife twisting in his chest to say it. It hurt so much to look into those long-gone eyes and say such a wretched thing. He squeezed Berran's hand in his own tightly, closing his eyes as the pain filled him up. After a moment, it subsided, and he gathered his strength again.

"I'm so sorry," he said quickly, kissing the tiny hand that he knew wasn't there. "But you're dead and I can't fix it. I need you to stop now. I need you to go away."

Berran's eyes filled with tears almost instantly. "I don't want to."

Harry tried to pull his hand away but Berran gripped it tightly, giving out a startled cry. He pulled again, reminding himself that there was nothing really holding them there. He couldn't possibly hurt Berran by pulling too hard. He couldn't hurt his feelings. There was no one there to hurt.

"You're dead," he muttered again, more to himself this time, and gave his hand another pull. It came free this time and Berran looked at him like he'd just been slapped. Another sharp pain in his chest made him grimace and suddenly Berran's face was changing again—a face splattered with blood, paled with infection, and yet dark with the shadow of approaching death.

Where was the Doctor? Where was Ganbri? Harry quickly rolled onto his other side, looking into the room instead of at Berran. It was dark and empty but there was a light shining out from the cracks around a closed door. His muscles weren't particular eager to respond or cooperate, but he forced them to move. He needed to get away from Berran.

Harry pulled himself to his feet and his legs grew suddenly weak, dropping him to his knees. The pain in his chest intensified again, like something was ripping it all apart from the inside, making him gasp for breath and struggle even more to make his body obey.

Somehow, he got back on his feet and staggered forward, using the walls or any piece of furniture he could grab to hold himself up. Berran was crying behind him now and he tried his hardest to shut out the sound. He managed to reach the door surrounded in light and nearly fell through when he pushed it open.

He made an awful lot of noise, knocking several things over when he collided with some sort of shelf on the wall. He heard the Doctor give a startled shout and the unmistakable cry of a newborn filled his ears. It was all a bit of a blur now, but he could see the Doctor's face looking at him with an expression of shock and simply went towards that. Something hot and wet hit his face and startled him, nearly causing him to fall over again, but the Doctor's arms caught him.

"Harry, you bleeding idiot," the Doctor grumbled as he carefully lowered Harry to the floor. "What the hell are you doing?"

Harry stammered for a moment, trying to work out what had happened. He could feel that he was still getting hit by something wet and he willed his eyes to focus, quickly realizing that the Doctor was completely undressed and his hair was dripping.

"You're . . . in the shower," he managed.

"Yes!" the Doctor answered rather irritably. "So are you apparently. Whatever were you thinking of?"

The Doctor hurried out of the shower, disappearing behind the foggy glass door for a moment. Harry could hear Ganbri screaming away, obviously having just been scared half to death, and the Doctor quietly shushing him.

After a moment, Ganbri began to quiet down and the Doctor popped his head back in the shower. "You're supposed to be resting!" he hissed as loudly as he dared. "You've woken the baby, I've got shampoo in my eyes,  _and_  you've ripped your I.V. out! Can't I just trust you to  _not_  do something ridiculous every time I leave you alone for two minutes?"

Maybe it was the water waking him up, or maybe it was the Doctor's complaining, but his head seemed to be fitting the pieces together again. "Something's wrong," he said quickly.

"Well, you're in the shower with your clothes on," the Doctor answered sarcastically, vanishing again as Ganbri slowly grew quiet. "That's not really how you're supposed to do it."

He sighed in annoyance and began pulling at the buttons on his shirt. "No, I mean my chest hurts."

"I imagine it does," the Doctor answered with that same irritating tone to his voice. "That tends to happen after a great hole is cut into it and a person is pulled out."

He felt another violent stab of pain and growled in frustration. "Would you stop being a bitch?"

"Oi!" The Doctor suddenly appeared again, without the baby this time, mouth open and brows together as though he were highly offended. "That's really rude!"

Why wasn't he listening? Harry glared at the Doctor with what he hoped was a face that threatened death. Then, infuriatingly, the Doctor smiled at him.

"Oh, relax," he said calmly as he stepped back into the shower, keeping his eyes on Ganbri as though he were willing him to stay quiet. "That pouch of yours has got to come off at some point and there's no way I'm going to surgically remove it. It's going to hurt for a couple of days while your body detaches everything properly, but you'll be fine."

The Doctor slid down onto the floor next to him, muttered something about him being an idiot again, and began to help him with his shirt. He hadn't thought much about what would happen to his body after the baby came so he wasn't exactly prepared for the sight hidden under his shirt. The Doctor didn't seem to mind, he didn't so much as twitch when the flesh was revealed, but Harry felt an instant and overwhelming disgust.

The skin on his chest sat there like some kind of enormous and foul rotten fruit. Deflated, covered in stretch marks, purple and red blotches decorating it, while some sections appeared to be thinning out and withering. It made him feel sick to know that it was a part of his own body.

"Give that back," he said quickly, snatching his shirt back out of the Doctor's hand to cover himself up.

"Don't be stupid," the Doctor answered immediately, pulling the shirt away again. "You're already soaked through, so you may as well get a proper wash."

"It's horrid," he complained, trying to fold over his arms to keep his chest covered and finding it difficult to do in a way that wasn't painful.

"Never mind that. Here, take these off."

He moved to assist the Doctor in taking off his trousers, tossing the pile of sopping wet clothing outside of the shower. It was horrible enough that that ugly lump of rot was even there, he couldn't stand the thought of the Doctor  _looking_  at it. He may as well have packed on a hundred pounds or grown hairy warts all over his face. What if it was all the Doctor ever remembered and never thought of him as attractive again?

"Do you remember when the denndi was just growing?" the Doctor asked, slipping his hand into Harry's and tangling their fingers together. "It was getting rather big and, though you wouldn't say it, you started thinking about how you looked. You got all moody and shy, remember? Didn't like it being pointed out, didn't want me touching it. You got right vain about it."

"Is there a point to you talking?" he grumbled in return.

"It didn't stop me from wanting you."

He looked up to see the Doctor smiling warmly at him. "Are you looking into my head?" he asked in surprise. After all the lectures he'd gotten in the past about reading people's minds without permission, did the Doctor dare show such hypocrisy?

But the Doctor just smiled a bit wider, like he thought it was funny. "I don't need to. I know you well enough."

It could be true, but he muttered "Liar" anyway.

The Doctor chose to ignore the accusation. "A couple of days and it'll come off. Don't worry about it."

Harry leaned his head against the wall behind him, squeezing the Doctor's hand as another sharp pain shot through his chest. The Doctor comforted him by delivering soft kisses to his face and neck, using his free hand to caress his back and, a couple of times, teasing his shevra.

The world still moved, time still twisted and curled, and somewhere in the future people were still dying. But, for just a little while, it was nice to only have to worry about something as trivial as physical appearance. It was nice to just sit under the hot water with his mate and pretend that all it took was a few kind words and affection to make everything better. It was nice to think that his child was safe from harm.

It was nice not to think about all the mistakes he had made.


	78. Kahlia

Fools. Liars. Cowards.

There was no one Kahlia could trust on that godforsaken ship except for herself. Reports were coming in fast now, each one wilder than the last. Her men were losing their minds with fear and she couldn't control the situation until she knew which tales were true.

That woman was false, she knew that much. The Star had been careful not to show his face while this woman raised the visor on her helmet and beamed proudly as she led the Priest Army. She _wanted_ to be seen. Kahlia saw her through the eyes of her men and saw nothing but a pawn.

So where was the real Star?

The Ginu'un Thunderbirds had successfully destroyed all of the ship's starboard side weaponry and were now docking. Her men would fight them and lose. The Ginu'uns were a powerful race and her men were simply not equipped to win any battles against them, but they might be able to slow them down just long enough. All she needed was time.

Meanwhile, she also had to worry about the prisoners. The Doctor had escaped along with all the others, and the word was that her father had broken them free. She heard about men being blasted into mist, eaten by shadows and dust, strangled by wailing ghosts, and even torn apart by a monster. It couldn't possibly all be true. Of course not.

Where were the lies? Where were the hidden players? Where were the secrets she was missing?

Father would know. He'd always had a knack for that sort of thing. The constant drumming in his head allowed him to see a rhythm to the universe, spotting the tiniest flaw in the pattern instantly. The secrets of the whole of creation were whispered into his mind like a never-ending song and no one seemed to understand the beauty in that—not even the Master himself.

Others saw a curse, while she saw a gift. Her whole life she could see genius in its purest form in her father and knew that the way he suffered was only a small price to pay for the blessings given to him. It broke her heart when he tried to erase her existence, but she knew there must have been something so much larger at the root of it. He did it because the drumming of the universe told him it must be done. There was a purpose. She just had to understand.

She'd begged to be allowed to join the Academy when she was a child, but Father strictly forbade it. He hated that place and she was a half-breed besides. She'd never looked into the Untempered Schism, but she was certain that, if she did, she would understand. The universe would speak to her, just as it had to her father, and she would understand why he would ever have done something so wicked.

She had crept along the sands in the dead of night, approaching the portal and pulling back the veil covering it. She heard no drumming but the beating of her own hearts. She heard no music from the universe, no secrets from the ends of time. But she did see. She saw her father in his madness, in wickedness, and finally, in weakness.

It felt as though she had been melting from the inside to see it. The pain was strong, but the sudden clarity was astounding.

Fight to survive, just as Father had always believed. If she didn't fight, she didn't deserve to live. And if she didn't fight for her birthright, she didn't deserve that either. The songs of the universe would be sung to her and the constant drumming would explain all there was to know, but she had to _earn_ it first.

Her brothers were a threat. They stole Father's attention, made him vulnerable, made him forget what the gift of the drums was for. She needed to dispose of them first and make Father weaker. She needed to break him, completely. When he stopped fighting for his life, only then would he no longer deserve what the universe had given to him—only then did she have permission to take it.

Her hands would bathe in his blood and that most beautiful call of the drums would finally come to her. She would uphold his legacy and every history that was ever written would remember the Master as the man he truly was, when the drums still kept him strong and his weaknesses had not yet infected him. She would keep his name proud and rule all of creation in his honour.

This was what she saw in the Vortex—the soul of the universe itself. This was her destiny as determined by all of time and space and reality. She was meant to do this for the betterment of everything.

Some said she had gone mad after that day, but they simply didn't understand. They didn't see. They did not know of the divine will that guided her.

Fools. Blind fools. They would not be so afraid if they understood how perfectly it made sense that the Vortex would first ask her to put down a false god before she could claim her father's gifts for herself. The Star had been sent to her as an initiation test. She had to kill him first—kill the false god and break Father by any means necessary. Then she could take his life for herself and make them both truly immortal.

The universe had designed this all for her, she merely had to find the correct path. The Star was hiding somewhere and she needed only to have faith that fate would guide her.

Her mind travelled through the eyes of one soldier to the next, searching the ship for anything that might tell her. She saw the swarm of Vashta Mereen devouring men in mid-stride and the howling light that choked the life out of them. She saw her father, swollen with child, and fighting with such ferocity that it was a little disheartening to her cause.

The Doctor ran, wounded and helping the supposed Ginu'un prince run with him. She was just observing the monster she'd heard about—a bronzed beast with teeth that dripped with blood as it tore and savaged the poor man in its grasp—when something happened.

She noticed one of the prisoners, the one they called the Prowler, fall to a gunshot. It would not have been remarkable in itself if she didn't see the way Father reacted. He was fleeing, fighting for his life, doing what he had to, to survive. And suddenly he stopped.

He turned back. He ran to the fallen man and fought to save the Prowler instead.

There was a loud noise and suddenly she lost the man whose eyes she'd been watching with. She scrambled to find another, scanning any mind she thought to be nearby. Amidst the chaos, she was able to catch glimpses of Father dragging the Prowler away and of a force field activating.

The next clear image she got, her father was gone and the others on his side were fleeing with him. She urged the soldier she was using to run faster and get a better look at the man on the ground ahead of him. She watched, holding her breath with excitement, as the Prowler lifted his head and his dark eyes scanned the oncoming swarm of soldiers.

He found her. He looked straight into the eyes of her approaching soldier and she knew without a doubt that it was her he was seeing.

Then his skin began to glow. The light of a Star. The light of a Time Lord about to regenerate.

"That's him," she said through the mouth of the man she was using.

She thought of the swollen denndi on her father's chest and the pieces fit together immediately. Oh, how wonderfully this had been prepared for her! The false god was also the last threat to her heritage and possibly the best chance she had at finally breaking Father's spirit. He was the key to fulfilling her grand destiny.

"Kill him," she ordered loudly as the light grew brighter. " _Kill him_!"

Her men were already firing but nothing seemed to be hitting him. The Prowler forced himself up onto his knees, his own blood pouring forth, clutching a small white object in his hand while he smiled at her.

"No," she heard him whisper directly into her thoughts. "Not today, you bitch."

The pain she felt was so fierce that it shot her consciousness back to her own body, where she found herself collapsed on the floor and screaming. Her nerves were on fire, her limbs convulsing, and her eyes were blinded by a glaring light. She could feel hands grasping at her physical body, but she had no way of knowing who they belonged to or of communicating with them.

The possession only passed with a strong burst of energy. She lay on the floor, gasping desperately as her servants fretted over her.

He was still alive. Out there, on her ship, the Star was alive and in a fresh body, more powerful than ever.

But that must be part of the test. A newly regenerated Time Lord was much harder to kill. She couldn't earn her rewards unless there was a true challenge. It was all just a part of the design, surely.

Her servants were chattering fearfully but she only caught little words like 'run' and 'monster'. They were trying to pull her to her feet, trying desperately to make her move.

"We are not running," she said as firmly as she could, pulling her arms free from their grasp. "The Star is out there, and I need him dead!"

"But Milady," a servant answered quickly. "The monster is—"

"I don't care about the fucking monster!" she screamed, slapping him as hard as she could across his pathetically frightened face. "I saw your monster and its nothing but an overgrown cat!"

Her servants opened their mouths to respond but no words came out. Instead the air filled with a dreadful and deafening roar.


	79. The Doctor

The Doctor knew that it had been a long time since Harry had held a baby, even longer since it was one of his own. A little hesitation was to be expected but still . . .

"He's not going to bite, you know."

Harry nodded but still didn't raise his hands to indicate that he was ready. The Doctor stood, shifting his weight back and forth, with Ganbri curled up against his chest. The baby was beginning to wake up and the Doctor had to keep a hand on the back of his head to stop it from randomly jerking backwards. He'd already been reminded the hard way that a newborn was perfectly capable of slamming their face into their parent's shoulder hard enough to cause thirty minutes of red-faced screaming.

He waited another thirty seconds before deciding that enough was enough. He wasn't sure what crazy ideas Harry was building up in his head, but he was certain that it was probably a load of negative nonsense.

"Just hold your hands out," he said firmly, pulling Ganbri away from his chest.

"What?" Harry answered, looking rather alarmed. "No, I'm not ready."

"Well, I'm putting him down in mid-air so can either hold your hands out or let him fall to the floor."

The Doctor had to smirk a bit at the panicked way Harry thrust out his arms. He let Ganbri down slowly, carefully, in case Harry did something unexpected. The baby stirred a little and made a couple of fussing noises but did not cry. He watched as Harry's eyes lit up, hormones and pheromones far stronger than narin creating an instant telepathic link between father and son. They were introducing themselves to each other for the first time in the outside world.

"He knows me," Harry said quietly, pulling the baby in close to his chest almost immediately.

The Doctor smiled knowingly. "And?"

Harry chuckled in an odd way, like he couldn't quite believe what he was saying. "He's relieved."

It was next to impossible to separate them after that. Even as Harry's body sent him through waves of pain, he couldn't seem to think about anything other than Ganbri. They spent hours sitting together just watching him sleep, hanging on every little squeak or yawn. It was bizarre to think that something as simple as stretching out toes or curling fingers could be so incredibly interesting and yet they couldn't get enough of him.

When the evening came, Harry's pain was so intense that he was struggling to remain calm. The Doctor settled Ganbri in the baby basket that had been stored in the room and did what he could to help, but the simple problem was that Harry's blood pressure was still too low to safely use pain killers.

"Always making me take the slow route," Harry grumbled loudly. He was standing in the bathroom's open doorway, using the frame to brace his arms against while he repeatedly bent over, squatted, or generally just fidgeted about on his feet. Apparently, having something solid to push his arms against made it easier.

"I can let you take the slow route or I can kill you," the Doctor answered simply, filling a cup with ice water in their tiny kitchenette.

Harry practically growled at that answer, his fists clenching and unclenching every few seconds. "You really are just the worst doctor ever, you know that?"

"Oh, I'm so terribly sorry. I'm sure you could have done a better job doing such a complex surgery with an O.R. thrown together by a kid, running on no sleep or food, after having just been tortured, with your fingers all messed up, and with  _Donna_  as your only assistant."

He had to smile at the way Harry glared at him. "I don't claim to be a doctor."

"Hmm, I wonder why," he muttered, walking over and wordlessly holding out the cup, complete with straw. "Once this is over, I'll make sure the TARDIS always has a supply of our blood," he said as Harry took sips between gasps of air. "I never really thought it was necessary before but apparently we attract trouble."

"You think?" Harry chuckled grimly before his teeth set together again.

The Doctor felt rather bad for him that he still had to go through all the labour pains even though the baby had already been born. Usually a birthing parent could use the anticipation of a child as incentive to handle the pain of it, while Harry's only incentive was having a flat chest again.

Another hour and Harry had reached the point of being so uncomfortable that he started making random accusations just because it gave him something to be angry at. "I don't know why  _I_  had to go through all of this," he spat out eventually. "We both knew you were in better health. Why didn't  _you_  carry the baby?"

"I think, if I remember correctly, that none of this was exactly planned," the Doctor answered as calmly as he could, fussing with the blanket Ganbri was wrapped up in just so that it would look like he was doing something useful. "I think you could even call it an accident."

Harry gave another annoyed growl. "Nothing is ever an accident with you!"

Soon he was on his knees on the floor beside the bed, letting his upper body rest on the mattress. He'd change positions every ten minutes or so, hoping to find some way to sit that would magically make him feel better.

The Doctor pulled a little fold-out chair over to the bed and sat down. "Do you want me to rub your back or something?"

"If you touch me, I will rip your face off with my nails."

The Doctor just leaned back in his seat like he hadn't heard anything. It was better just not to say anything if Harry made a comment like that. He was looking for somewhere to project his frustrations and the last thing the Doctor wanted to do was give him an excuse to start a fight.

It was only another two minutes before the pain intensified again. Harry's fists gripped the sheets and he gave a particularly dreadful sounding yell that caused Ganbri to let out a little cry of his own.

" _Fuck_!" Harry groaned loudly, jigging his body back and forth a bit and pulling at the bed's blankets so that they formed an enormous pile beneath his chest. "Alright, go on then!"

The Doctor tensed up instantly, not sure of what he was supposed to do and not wanting to say something wrong. "Sorry . . . go on with what?"

"My back, you idiot!" Harry barked. "Do something. Do bloody well  _anything_!"

The Doctor scooted his chair forward quickly so that he was sitting directly behind Harry and set to work. He tried to remember what he'd been advised to do back when his first children were being born so many centuries ago, then quickly tried not to think about it because, if Harry happened to catch any of his thoughts and realized he was thinking about one of 'his women', it would surely spark a fight.

Gentle, sweeping movements, if he remembered right. The idea wasn't an actual backrub, just some tactile sensation to help distract the mind. It seemed to be working. Harry was still clearly in a lot of pain, but he wasn't moving about so much anymore.

The Doctor dared to shift his chair a few inches closer so that his knees were on either side of Harry's ribcage and he could easily bend forward to plant a gentle kiss between Harry's shoulder blades. "Thank you for this," he said quietly. "I love you, Harry."

Harry groaned again. "I love you too, you son of a bitch."

"My mother was lovely," he couldn't help saying with a smirk on his face.

"I  _know_!"

It was a long night. There were a few times when Ganbri would start crying and it was enough to distract Harry a bit from the pains he was going through. He began to worry that Ganbri could sense his distress and that it was frightening him, so he put in a strong effort to calm down. The Doctor did what he could whenever Harry would allow him to touch him.

At one point, he had arranged them so that were both sitting on the bed. He had his legs spread apart so that Harry could sit directly in front of him and the Doctor alternated between rubbing his back, reaching his arms forward to hold his hands, and simply wrapping his arms around Harry's torso and hugging him. All the while his mind worked away on sending soothing thoughts and all the best memories he could think of.

He thought of being eight years old and crying his eyes out because he was so frightened of going to the Academy. Harry didn't make fun of him at all for that, even though he wasn't half as scared. He just patted the Doctor's back and reminded him that they would be going together.

He thought of being ten and lying on his back in one of the fields. They'd begun their lessons on other worlds that day and they spent hours gazing up at the endless sky and talking about all the places they would go when they were old enough.

He remembered being fifteen and being truly heartsick over a girl for the first time. Somehow Harry knew all about it and gave him good advice on how to cope with the feelings. He remembered thinking that it was odd that his friend seemed so familiar with it when he'd never really talked about liking someone else. It made more sense now.

"I remember that," Harry interrupted his stream of thoughts. "It sucked."

So, instead, he remembered all the little memories that he knew would make his husband happy. A tense moment in the Bio Lab so very long ago when he stared at Harry's face, half in terror and half in excitement, as it came a little too close to his own and his fingers got a little too daring on his back.

He remembered watching Harry sit with Lily in his lap, gently stroking her, and realizing how gentle and wonderful he really was—the moment when his mind finally fit the pieces together and looked at his ancient enemy in a new light. He thought of the way it sent tingles down his spine when Harry ran his fingers through his hair as he snipped it away, the way his hearts sped up as he realized what he was about to do.

He could just barely see the corner of Harry's mouth tug upwards. "Technically," he said quietly, squeezing the Doctor's hands. "That wasn't our first kiss."

"The first one doesn't count," the Doctor answered quickly. "You were crazy for the first one."

"It was still the first one."

But then he was thinking about their other firsts—butterflies in his stomach, wondering who would make the first move, daring himself to take it further, suddenly realizing how remarkably handsome Harry was and imagining what it might be like to be with him. Oh, the thrill that just a look could give, or the simplest of touches. He remembered the way Harry had eased him to the floor in the console room and his body was suddenly so alive. How wonderful it felt to feel whole again, to be connected to someone else so completely, to be touched in ways that didn't let him think of anything else.

"Are you  _serious_?"

The Doctor blinked, not sure what the irritated tone was for. It only took a couple more seconds for him to realize what exactly had prompted such a comment and quickly scooted himself backwards a few inches. Evidently, he'd been remembering the early days of their romance a little too fondly.

"Sorry," he cleared his throat and tried to think of something sobering to calm the burning in his cheeks.

But, despite how tightly he was gripping the Doctor's hands, Harry chuckled. "You really did miss me."

"I did."

He decided not to back down or withdraw as long as it worked to keep Harry happy. As long as his touch was being allowed and well received, he let his fingers trace along the other Time Lord's back and occasionally be daring enough to venture towards the front. He continued sharing all his favourite memories as he planted kisses along Harry's shoulders to his neck. It might not have eased his pain, but it seemed to give him something else to focus on. And the Doctor himself craved some intimacy anyway.

It was nearly morning when the cell replicator had finally replenished enough of Harry's blood to make using a pain killer safe. The Doctor made sure to pull Ganbri's basket within arm's reach of the bed before he settled down with Harry again, in preparation of what he knew would happen next.

Harry leaned back against the Doctor's chest, just as he was before, seeking comfort while the pain subsided. It made him smile to hear the little sighs of relief as the drugs took hold, to feel Harry's body finally begin to relax. It was good. Harry's body could continue its process perfectly fine without his mind. Let the poor man rest.

Just as he predicted, Harry was out cold almost as soon as the drugs kicked in, getting some much-needed sleep.

The Doctor was stuck between the heavy body and the wall behind him, but that was fine. He would rather be there than anywhere else in all the universe, even if it was a bit sore on his ribs and cut off the circulation to his feet. When Ganbri fussed, he was able to just reach his hand out and rest it on the baby's tiny body, sharing his time energy to satisfy him.

His mate and his son—happy, healthy, and at peace. Somehow, something so very simple as that was worth everything he had endured and every fight that was still to come. He'd almost forgotten what it felt like to have a child. There was an old beast in him that stirred when he looked down at that impossibly small being—an old beast that was determined not to lose this one.

There was not a thing imaginable that could make him back down from that unconditional love, nothing that would prevent him from ripping worlds apart to save that life. That was his son, his blood, and he was tired of making sacrifices. After everyone he'd lost in his many lonely years, he was simply not going to allow it to happen anymore.

He would give Kahlia her one chance that he'd promised and, when she didn't take it, he'd tear a hole in her heart. This time, he would eliminate the threat of her without a moment's hesitation and feel no regret.

Then he remembered.

He breathed in the smell of Harry's hair and soaked in his warmth, knowing full well that the other Time Lord's passions tended to be stronger than his own. The Doctor knew without a doubt that Harry would fight just as hard, if not harder, and that he was willing to do so much more. Because nothing,  _nothing_  would ever stop that man from saving his child ever again.

And at the end of it all, Kahlia was still Harry's child.


	80. Harry

Harry woke up in exactly the same position that he had fallen asleep. He could feel the Doctor behind him, hear his steady breathing as he slept with his back to the wall. Harry tried to move slowly as he got up, but the sudden lack of weight and heat was still enough to disturb the sleeping man.

"Wh'you doing?" the Doctor murmured sleepily, raising his eyebrows high on his head in a vain attempt to force his eyes to stay open.

"Nothing. Go back to sleep, lahrre."

But the Doctor stared up at him with half closed eyes and an open mouth for a moment, and Harry could almost hear the cogs turning in his head. Then the Doctor's eyes shifted to something at the foot of the bed as though he had just noticed something. Harry followed those eyes and saw Berran standing there.

Harry felt his insides jump up in surprise, assuming for just a moment that the image must have been real, but then he realized what had really happened. The Doctor assumed something was wrong and poked into his mind to see what it was.

"Prat!" he hissed, smacking the Doctor on the leg as he hurriedly got up. "Don't do that!"

"It's annoying, isn't it?" the Doctor giggled merrily, stretching out in his newfound space to get comfortable. He bundled up some of the blankets under his head to act as a pillow and nestled in comfortably. "You alright?"

"Yeah."

"Want me to stay awake with you?"

The question made him smile, but mainly because the words had come out completely slurred and barely audible. "No, that's okay. I just want to stretch my legs."

"Mm'kay," the Doctor hummed in response, allowing his eyes to slip shut. "Don't do anything stupid."

Harry glanced down at the end of the bed, where Berran was standing with his head cocked to one side like a puppy. "I'll do my best."

Berran followed him to the washroom and stood beside him as he washed his face. Harry stood in the kitchenette, trying desperately to look at anything but the silent specter as he waited for the kettle to boil. He stole glances over the rim of his mug as he sipped at his tea. Dead eyes watched him as he sat on the edge of the bed next to Ganbri's cot and reached his hand in to gently touch the baby's forehead.

If Berran had been talking, it probably would have been easier to ignore him. But there was something about the way he stood silently that made it impossible to think of anything else. Harry turned his face away to look at the other wall and the sight he found earned a skipped heartbeat and a sudden feeling of breathlessness.

Kahlia was staring at him with those grey eyes of hers. It was Kahlia as she was in her first body when she was young—five, maybe six years old. She was innocent and lovely, her eyes still alive with that spark of wonder, her dark lips curved into a genuine smile.

A few drops of hot tea splashed onto his leg and made him aware that his hands were shaking, so he averted his eyes to his cup instead. He stared hard into the steam, willing his hands to cease their trembling and for the wordless ghosts to leave his sight.

Ganbri stirred a little, probably able to sense the uneasiness. He looked back into the cot and saw two infants lying side by side, sleepily stretching limbs and yawning wide.

Harry hurriedly turned his eyes back down to his tea and forced his shaking hand to raise the cup to his lips. He kept trying to tell himself that it was nothing to fret over. He was hormonal, that was all. Of course he was. He'd just had a baby. His paternal drive was in high gear, so it would be odd for him to  _not_  think of his other children.

He continued assuring himself that it all fine and normal and decided that perhaps it was best just to keep his eyes closed. But when he did that, his mind filled with the memories of the day Berran was born. Kahlia held him proudly and smiled with genuine happiness.

"He looks like you," he heard her voice in his head, and saw her face light up again. "It's a good thing you've got me this time around. I can make sure you get it right."

His cup fell to the floor with a loud clatter and splashed his feet with hot tea. He felt the Doctor's hands on his back immediately, quickly sliding around to the front to pull him backwards against him. He should have known the Doctor was awake and watching—ever the liar, ever the spy.

"What did I do to her?" he heard himself saying, though it didn't feel like he was saying it voluntarily. "She was a good girl. She was always—"

"Don't think about it," the Doctor said quickly, gently pulling him further onto the bed. "Focus on me."

He pushed himself backwards quickly, following the Doctor's guidance so that he was properly on the bed. He tried to force his mind to erase the images before him, but they just continued to stare with their dark and hollow eyes. Berran breathing, Wilson crying, Kahlia smiling and loving. What had he done to them all?

She had always been such a good little girl.

"Harry," the Doctor was speaking to him, touching his face, trying so hard to keep his attention. "Look at me, lahrre."

Ganbri was crying now and he knew it was his fault. The baby was sensitive to him and knew that something was wrong. Less than two days old and Harry was already filling his head with fear. He stared into Kahlia's grey eyes and prayed that she wouldn't hear Ganbri crying, that she wouldn't find him. And then he remembered that he'd left Ganbri behind—bleeding, dying, identity about to be exposed, and within reach of Kahlia's claws.

He couldn't seem to tear his eyes away from her or to hear anything other than Ganbri's cries. His limbs wouldn't work, his mouth wouldn't form words, and his chest hurt so badly that he was just barely aware of the Doctor's hands grasping at him.

Then the Doctor's hands were placed firmly on either side of his face, forcing him to turn his gaze in a different direction. He met the Doctor's eyes, wide and wild looking, so very worried. He watched the other Time Lord try to force a smile, though it wasn't very convincing.

Harry just wanted it all to go away. He just wanted to be able to enjoy what he still had instead of mourning what he had lost. He didn't want to remember the terrible things he had done and the consequences that would haunt him forever after.

"What do I do?" he managed to ask.

The Doctor looked straight at him with that set look of determination. "Let me help."

Even if Harry had thought to resist, he had a feeling that the Doctor wouldn't have let him. The Doctor met his lips, forced them apart, and flooded him with narin. He tasted like charcoal and caramel. Sugar and ash. Happiness and destruction. Harry felt afraid and assured at the same time by the turbulence that was the Doctor's mind.

Everything in his head was rushed out in a flurry of thoughts. Suddenly he couldn't remember why he was so distressed or why his chest hurt. He didn't know why he should be worried or what it was that had mattered so much. All he knew was that it was nice to feel such a warm body in the night's chill and to lie down when he felt so dizzy.

The narin made him think of dark locks of hair slipping through his fingers, fireworks, and black holes in the sky. Somehow, he thought of Madame de Pompadour, but he couldn't imagine why. It was making him feel better but there was something about what was happening that didn't feel right.

It felt like holding someone's hand in the dark, reaching out to touch them and not being able to find the rest of their body. The Doctor was in his mind, filling it and influencing it, but when Harry reached back, it was like there was nothing there. Why was he hiding?

The Doctor had climbed on top of him now, carefully straddling him, and Harry was suddenly aware that he couldn't just move away if he wanted to. The Doctor's kisses deepened, the narin fiercely working to fill his head with a cloud of confusion and pleasure. He remembered this happening once before and having an odd feeling that something was wrong.

The Doctor's hands slid down his arms and firmly pinned his wrists to the mattress.

"What are you doing?" Harry gasped, breaking away from the Doctor's mouth. "I don't—"

"Shh," the Doctor interrupted quickly, releasing Harry's wrists and tangling their fingers together instead. "Trust me."

Holding his hands may have seemed less restrictive than holding his wrists, but it held him down just the same.

Ever the liar. Ever the spy. Ever his Doctor.

All Harry knew then was that everything felt good and his mind was too full of fog to care about anything else. All visions of ghosts and demons were long gone and forgotten, any pain was erased. What had he been so worried about anyway?

Every shuddering breath brought another wave of blissful pleasure, washing away all the nightmares. His skin tingled to life beneath the Doctor's hands and mouth, the rest of his body tensing up and reaching out in agonizing pleas to be touched the same way. It just felt so good.

Then, as instantaneous as someone snapping their fingers, it all vanished. He was left lying empty and cold and so very confused. The weight of the Doctor's body and all traces of his warmth were gone. God, it was freezing! His hands felt around for his clothes only to realize that he was still wearing them.

That was new.

It was the pained and pitiful sounding moan that alerted him to the Doctor's presence and Harry quickly found him in the dark. He was sitting on the floor next to the bed, looking like he had fallen there rather than sat down, with a hand pressed firmly against his nose and mouth.

"Doctor?" he said, sitting up to get a better look. "What happened?"

Those brown eyes turned in his direction and Harry clearly saw beads of sweat on the Doctor's brow. "Nothing," he answered, but the odd sputter that accompanied the word said more.

"What did you do?" Harry demanded, moving over to the bedside for a better look. He could see a small trail of blood slipping out from underneath the Doctor’s hand and running down his chin.

He felt an instant push in his mind, a quiet voice eagerly trying to tell him to stay calm and not to worry. Annoyed, he gave a strong push back to force it out. The Doctor released the kind of sound Harry might have expected if he had punched him in the gut, but certainly didn't expect it from just a telepathic shove.

It seemed that his Doctor was growing powerful, but not yet powerful enough.

Harry reached out and gripped the Doctor's wrist firmly, pulling his hand away from his face. The Doctor put on a scowl but relented and allowed Harry to expose him. He'd seen this happen to some kids in the Academy, to some people that he had trained, and even to Kahlia once or twice. Just like a training athlete could tear a muscle, when a Time Lord tried to push their mind too far too fast, it occasionally resulted in a very sudden nosebleed and what felt like being hit in the head with a hammer.

"Why are you trying so hard?" Harry asked quietly, though he knew he could not expect the truth.

"You needed a distraction and I gave you one," the Doctor replied quickly, snatching a used towel off the floor to wipe off his face and block the continued flow. "Besides, it's always felt rather good when you do that to me. I just wanted to learn how to do it, that's all."

Harry watched as the Doctor shut his eyes tight, the towel in his hand suddenly being gripped much tighter. A little grunt escaped the Doctor's mouth as he experienced what Harry was sure was a wave of dizziness and the throbbing pain that accompanied a telepathic fracture.

He waited for the Doctor to open is eyes before speaking again. "What else were you doing?"

"Nothing."

He smiled a little and reached his mind out to the Doctor, willing him to look him in the eye. "Doctor," he said in a very calm voice once their eyes met. "I'm better at this than you."

"I was just," the Doctor stammered over his words a bit, though that could have been the dizziness. "Well, first off, I was trying to calm the baby down as well."

That must have been true. Harry remembered that Ganbri had started crying but now he was sleeping peacefully.

"And?"

"And I . . . I was just making sure you were . . .  _okay_."

He watched the Doctor's eyes carefully, but it was difficult to read them properly when he kept grimacing.

"It's just been a really crazy time lately," he added, moving to get up off the floor. "I was just trying to see if there was anything you were having trouble with and weren't telling me about."

"You could have asked."

"And what the point have been in that?" the Doctor asked, walking over to the bathroom to clean his face but leaving the door open so that they could still talk. "Your hormones are all over the place, your brain is just trying to tell your body how to fix itself, and you're medicated. Trust me, it would have been a fruitless conversation. I was only trying to help, Harry."

Harry watched through the open door as the Doctor washed his face, only just noticing that his hair was getting rather long. It was at the point where, even if the Doctor took the time to style it, it probably wouldn't stay up anymore.

"You need a haircut."

The Doctor's eyes moved to spot him in the mirror and a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "You gonna give me one?"

"If you want."

"You could use one too," the Doctor answered. "And a shave."

"Right. Then tomorrow we'll both be barbers."

"Mm, I think I still like Doctor better."

He watched in horror as the Doctor tossed his towel to the floor. "Oh, come on, that one's got blood on it!" he protested.

" _Alright_ , calm down," the Doctor answered quickly, picking the towel up again to toss in the hamper. "Sorry."

"I hope you practiced better hygiene than that when you were cutting me open!"

"No, I didn't. Really I lied," he said, pointing at the withering and purple mass hidden beneath Harry's shirt. "And that is actually not normal. It's dreadfully infected, you'll probably die in a day or two, and I just wasn't sure how to tell you. But the cat's out of the bag now so . . . sorry about that."

"That's not funny," Harry grumbled.

But the Doctor just grinned at him, despite the little stumble in his step as he made his way back to the bed. Harry couldn't really think of what the Doctor could have been doing that would have been cause for concern, but he didn't feel that he was completely trustworthy right then either. There were events still to come with an awful lot on the line, and the Doctor had been known to do drastic things in the past.

As the Doctor nestled down in the bed next to him, Harry wondered what was going on in that head of his. He supposed he just had to trust that he would do what he thought was best for all of them. He'd always been a liar. He'd always been a spy. That was just who the Doctor was and always would be. That was the person he loved.

It was the next morning that the Doctor vanished for the first time.


	81. Harry

"I hope I haven't just broken it. There's this little red light flashing."

"Try the thing that looks a thermometer on a spring."

"There isn't one."

"What do you mean, there isn't one?"

"I mean, it's not here! What do you think it means?"

It took Harry a few seconds to realize that the voices were not imagined and a few seconds more to realize that he knew them. He had barely heard Ganbri speak when he met him as the Prowler, but he knew that voice, and that of the little Alreesh man who was with him.

The Doctor was nowhere to be seen and the voices seemed to be coming from the walls themselves. Harry slowly pulled himself out of bed, looking around and listening carefully.

"What about the blue bobbly thing?" Nista's voice asked, odd and crackly, like it was coming through a phone.

"The big one or the little one?" Ganbri replied, sounding very worried.

"Are there two?"

"Normally, yes, but there's about six here so . . ."

"Well, maybe the light doesn't mean anything. What did you do right before it turned on?"

Harry turned and looked at the screen on the wall and saw it moving with the image of his son. It looked like the TARDIS was watching Ganbri through a camera in the console and was transmitting the image.

There he was, healthy and alive. His hair was a bit longer than when Harry had seen him and he could see that there was some curl to it, just like the hair he had in his own first body. That made him smile a bit. He climbed back on the bed to get in close, looking properly at Ganbri's eyes now and seeing the rich brown in them with little flecks of green. He was a handsome lad, really.

"Uh, I was adding the surveillance system."

He could see the white walls behind Ganbri's head and recognized the TARDIS as she was when the Doctor took her. He must have accidentally begun a recording without knowing it while he built the room but who knew why it had chosen to play now. Then he remembered that the Doctor was missing and that he probably had something to do with it.

"J.J.?" Ganbri said with a sudden strange tone of uncertainty to his voice.

"Yeah?" Nista's voice answered from what Harry assumed to be some sort of communicator that was sitting on the TARDIS console.

"The ship says there's someone in there."

"There can't be. You're still building it."

"Maybe it's a glitch."

Harry was barely listening, caught up in watching Ganbri's face—the way he chewed his thumb while he thought, the way his brows furrowed together. He was remembering the way he saw Ganbri fight, strong and fearless. He remembered watching him shove a gun into that woman's hands and snarling  _"You wanna live? Fight for it."_  How had he not figured it out earlier? How could that be anyone other than his son?

"Ask Jenny where everyone is."

Suddenly a woman's voice answered over the communicator. "I've been watching them all on the monitors, Ganbri. I haven't seen the most recent Harry anywhere, but I've been watching Dad."

That caught his attention.

"All three of him?"

"Yeah. The first two are walking around with Harry and the third one went back to the other TARDIS. He didn't follow you. No one did. There's no one in there."

"It must be some kind of temporal feedback then," Ganbri muttered in return. "Three copies of the TARDIS from three different timestreams all in the same place must be screwing with the sensors . . . Oh, hold on. I think if I—"

The image and the voices vanished as quickly as they had come. Ganbri must have found the button to stop the recording. It made Harry feel surprisingly empty, sitting in that silence, and he suddenly realized how cold it was.

He pulled Ganbri out of his cot where he had been lying awake, happily staring up at the ceiling and testing out his new muscles. It was hard to believe that something so tiny and unbelievably adorable would grow up to the man he'd seen cutting down soldiers.

He pondered over the words he'd heard as he paced slowly back and forth, patting Ganbri's back and allowing the baby to feed off his time energy. He'd heard that Jenny person refer to the Doctor as 'Dad' while she called him 'Harry' but decided it was best not to jump to conclusions.

Twenty minutes later, the Doctor returned with supplies readily visible in his hands—spices, medicine, and even a couple of books. He quickly apologized for being so long, explaining that it was difficult moving about the ship and that he had also been working on reprogramming the ship's security. Apparently, they would be able to access any cameras or footage from their little room now and Harry supposed it was that reprogramming that had caused the centuries-old recording to play.

He waited until the Doctor was done speaking, letting all the excuses and lies get out of the way before he asked. "Who's Jenny?"

Harry wasn't really sure what he expected to hear. Probably another lie, really. If the Doctor had pretended not to know what he was talking about or brushed it off as some random shop girl he met once, it would have at least seemed normal. But instead, the Doctor just looked him in the eye and answered truthfully and without burden.

"My daughter."

Some small part of Harry’s brain reminded him that it was good really. If the Doctor knew who she was, that meant it was something that happened in the past. Otherwise it might have meant the Doctor was having children with someone else in their future.

"Explain why I've never heard of her."

The Doctor moved about the room, putting away his gathered supplies, and shrugged his shoulders. "I thought she was dead."

"Obviously you haven't thought that for a while."

"No," the Doctor answered casually, pausing to peck a kiss on Harry's cheek and one on Ganbri's forehead as he passed them on the way to the kitchenette. "Remember when I asked you about the terraforming engine's capability for reanimating inhabitants that were killed by outside forces? You knew I was asking about someone who died."

"You didn't tell me it was your  _daughter_."

"I didn't see the need to."

It took everything he had not to shout at the idiot. Somehow, he managed to keep his voice sounding calm. "Were you ever going to tell me?"

"Well, sure, if it came up. Look, I didn't actually know if she really was alive. I just figured it was likely after you told me about the reanimation process," the Doctor answered again in that infuriatingly casual voice as he set the kettle to boil. "Tea?"

"Who's her mother?" he practically spat out.

"She doesn't have one."

Dead? Gone? "Who  _was_  her mother then?" he replied irritably. "That Rose woman?"

"No, no. Rose and I never—I was with Donna when—"

" _Donna_!?" That one came out loudly and Ganbri suddenly let out an unhappy squeal.

"What!?  _No_!" the Doctor shouted back. "No, no, no. Listen, Jenny  _never_  had a mother. I had my DNA basically stolen from me and used to generate a soldier and out she came. She died. I suspected she might have been reanimated but had no real evidence. End of story. Do you want tea or not?"

He eyed the Doctor carefully. He knew he shouldn't be surprised and yet somehow he was. Ganbri was still whimpering and threatening to cry, unhappy with the sudden noise.

"Yeah," he answered quietly, increasing the amount of time energy he was giving to quiet the baby. "But Doctor . . . if you thought she could be alive, why didn't we go look for her?"

"Didn't want to find out if I was wrong," the Doctor answered simply.

That day it was supplies and the next it was better books and the one after that was because he needed to stretch his legs. Without fail, the Doctor found a reason to leave each night. Sometimes he waited until morning but, most often, he was gone by the time Harry woke up.

When he came back, the Doctor was always as attentive as Harry could ask for. They would sit together and do nothing but read or talk or make plans for how to make the TARDIS child-friendly. Any time the painkillers were not quite enough to keep him comfortable as his body worked through its recovery, the Doctor was always ready with soothing words and various offers of comfort. Even with his fingers still healing and giving him pain, the Doctor insisted on massages when Harry's pain was at its worst.

After four days, the pain finally stopped and the withered flesh simply fell off. The Doctor picked up the remains of the odd-looking sack and made a thousand jokes out of it, including asking if he could see if Ganbri would still fit in it, before Harry wrestled it off him and threw it away. Somehow the laughter and the teasing turned to something more intimate but, even when they found themselves in bed, the Doctor would not open his mind to Harry fully.

Those days together were all that could be asked for but, when the Doctor vanished, there was always the heavy weight of absence and mistrust. Some days he came back and, though he didn't say anything, Harry could tell by the tension around his eyes that his head was hurting him. "Did you get another nosebleed today?" he asked the first time he noticed it.

"Yeah," the Doctor answered with a sheepish smile. "It's all that mental feeling around I have to do so that I know where everyone is. I don't want to be bumping into anyone from our past again."

Liar. Harry didn't bother to accuse him because the Doctor knew that his lies weren't fooling anyone. He lied anyway and Harry pretended not to know. It was the only way to keep peace in their current tiny and isolated world.

After a week had passed, Harry willed himself to sleep lightly and woke when the Doctor did. When the Doctor emerged from the bathroom, freshly showered and dressed, Harry was sitting on the edge of the bed with his shoes on.

"I'm coming with you," he announced firmly.

The Doctor sniffed with disinterest and straightened his tie out a bit. "What about the baby?"

"We can bring him."

"What if he cries?"

"I'll take care of it."

"Right," The Doctor smiled warmly. "Family outing then."

Harry knew the Doctor wouldn't show him what he was really doing on those outings of his. He knew that he wouldn't be taken to some hidden room and shown the Doctor's secrets. Still, it felt a bit like a victory.

The Doctor led them to the fishery, a good fifteen-minute walk from any part of the ship that was regularly used. Harry hadn't seen the fishery since it was nothing more than a room with a large fish tank in it for holding some Liotob swamp toad eggs, but it had grown since then.

When Harry saw it again, the fishery stretched for what looked like a mile. The whole thing was just an enormous lake of water with walkways and small islands travelling throughout it, all covered in fuzzy green moss. Even the walls were covered in moss there. Moss and water were the only surfaces to be found.

"Let me hold the baby in case you start throwing a fit or something," the Doctor muttered, reaching out to take Ganbri from him. "He's a bit young for your version of swimming, I think."

For a long while, they just walked along the mossy paths, staring down into the water at the endless species of fish and other aquatic creatures. When one of the swamp toads leapt up onto their path, the Doctor bent down to let Ganbri get a good look. The thing was the size of a small dog and Harry was busy remembering how very strong their jaws were while the Doctor talked quietly to Ganbri and patted the great beast on the head.

"He's lovely, isn't he?" the Doctor said happily in a strangely soft voice he seemed to reserve specifically for Ganbri. "We call him Rupert. Daddy hatched him right here and helped him grow up. You're gonna help me hatch things when you're a bit bigger, aren't you?"

He kept talking in that way for a while, telling Ganbri all about finding mysterious eggs and hatching them and taking care of the creatures born from them. Ganbri either stared blankly, wiggled and made strange noises, or began to fall asleep. The Doctor didn't seem to care and kept talking anyway.

After a while, they settled down in the soft moss of one of the islands. Harry stretched out and considered taking a nap, while the Doctor laid down next to him and set Ganbri so that he was curled up on the Doctor's stomach.

"I can't believe how big it's gotten in here," Harry said quietly. "When do you do all this?"

"Well, you know," the Doctor shrugged his shoulders. "Hobbies."

"What sort of hobbies do you have now?"

The silence that followed was strangely comfortable. The Doctor could spit a lie out instantaneously, so a pause meant that he was pondering the truth. Harry laid still and quiet and gave him that time to think.

"Kahlia is a very clever girl," the Doctor said finally, twisting his body in an odd way so that he could take his shoes off without disturbing Ganbri. "My fight with her is different than what I'm used to. I need to adapt. I need to learn."

That was a start, he supposed. Harry craned his neck to see what the Doctor was doing and watched while he tossed his socks and shoes to the side.

"Try this," the Doctor said happily as he began shifting his body again. "I can hear Daisy coming."

It was amusing to watch him wiggle across the ground with his elbows and feet, clutching Ganbri to his stomach to make sure he didn't go anywhere.

"Who's Daisy?"

"Lovely little northern gingerbread shark," the Doctor answered, finally reaching the edge of the moss and letting his feet slip into the water.

"I am not putting my feet in the water with a gingerbread shark!"

"No, it's nice," the Doctor insisted, splashing his feet about a little, presumably to attract the shark. "You'll like it. Go on."

"And they call me the madman," he grumbled, but began taking his shoes off just the same.

The Doctor was watching him as he set his shoes aside, with that odd little smile on his face and that loving look in his eyes. Ganbri had curled up on the Doctor's stomach, looking like a little tree frog as he slept. The Doctor's fingers, crooked and painful as Harry was sure they were, curled protectively around the tiny body. It was one of the most beautiful things Harry had ever seen.

"Our priorities are different in all of this," the Doctor said quietly as Harry reluctantly dipped his feet into the water. "I need you to remember that. Anything I do is only to make sure that you and Ganbri are safe. I can't rest as long as there is a threat to either of you."

The Doctor didn't say it directly, but his point was clear.

He felt the shark bump against his foot and it sent a little surge of adrenaline coursing through his body but he tried not to show it. "She's my daughter," he answered quietly.

"I know, lahrre," the Doctor whispered in return, reaching his hand out to find Harry's. He felt the cold metal of the Doctor's ring against his skin. "And you were my friend."

The shark was pushing its nose against his toes now, nuzzling his foot curiously. Harry felt the vacuum of water as it opened its mouth and the sharp points of teeth gently scraping his skin.

Thousands had died for the sake of their friendship. The Doctor's sentiment for him, his determination to save the Master, had prevented him from doing what needed to be done too many times. Yes, it worked out for them in the end. Yes, they were very happy. But how many people lost loved ones because the Master had always been the Doctor's friend?

"Try not to move," the Doctor muttered quietly. "I found Daisy trapped in the canals of Five Harmonies a few years ago. She'd been so badly injured by one of the filtering systems that she couldn't possibly have survived on her own. That doesn't make her teeth any less sharp tough."

"I want to save Kahlia," Harry breathed, trying to fight the frightened urge to kick the shark in the head.

"Yes," the Doctor agreed. "I won't stop you from trying."

Daisy's basihyal raised up and folded around Harry’s foot, larger and fleshier than that of the shark species from Earth. He felt the knobbed flesh gripping and poking at his foot, while her teeth continued to scrape against his heel and ankle. As frightening as it was, it actually felt like getting some sort of underwater massage.

"You won't tell me your plan?"

The shark let go of his foot and began to swim around again, bumping against his legs almost affectionately.

"When have I ever got a plan?"

The shark opened her mouth to his other foot. He twitched instinctively and felt his skin bump against the razor-sharp edge of her tooth. It was only the tiniest pinprick of pain, but he knew the tooth must have cut him a little. He wasn't sure how much blood the shark might taste, or how she would react, but he decided it would be best just to keep his foot where it was and hope she didn't bite.

"Any time that you claim not to have one."

The Doctor smiled at him as the shark gently closed her mouth around his foot.

"Then I haven't got a plan."


	82. The Doctor

Time simply flew by. Ganbri got bigger every day. Every scrape and bruise and all evidence of Kahlia's cruelty had almost vanished. How had a month passed so quickly?

The Doctor was returning from his usual outing, stopping regularly at control stations to check the security so that he wouldn't cross paths with anyone. His head throbbed. He was quite used to the headaches by now, but sometimes they were a bit much to handle.

Harry berated him any time he returned with signs of telepathic exhaustion. He mentally berated himself as well, but he told himself that it couldn't be helped. Every day that passed was another day closer to their return to the battlefield and he needed to be ready. If he could just push himself hard enough—make himself be strong enough, he might be able to pull it off.

Either way, it was good to get out of that room for a little while. And it was very interesting to learn some of the things he had missed the last time he lived through this timeline. His obsessive checks over the security system had revealed a lot to him.

The night Harry was shot in the leg, Jack got so drunk in one of the lounges that he slept on the floor in there. He'd seen Harry talking to himself a few times when he was alone. Donna regularly walked past their sealed room and sometimes stopped just to stare at the door. Occasionally she would step forward or raise her hand like she was going to knock, but then seemed to think better of it and walked off. He also realized that Shaun was aware of far more than he ever let on and was apparently very good at keeping quiet about it.

The day before the Doctor had been checking the cameras on his way back and saw that Shaun was just around the corner. He dashed into the nearest room to hide but the door did not close silently. The sudden surge of energy upset his already pounding head and he felt a warm stream rush down the front of his face.

Shaun opened the door to find him crouched down in the dark, eyes wide clutching a cloth to his face to stop the bleeding. He saw Shaun's eyes clearly glance at the raw, pink skin on his forehead where the gash was healing. For a moment they just stared at each other, frozen.

"Alright?" Shaun asked, nodding his head at the Doctor.

"Yeah."

"Need help?"

"No, thanks, I'm fine. It's just a nosebleed really. I've got it."

Shaun's eyes searched over him again, notably pausing again at the mark on his forehead. "Mm . . . you know where to find me if you change your mind," he said quietly, stepping back through the doorway. "I'll make sure the others don't come down here for a while."

He had to be much more careful after that. If anyone else had found him it could have gone very badly. Only a few days more, and their past selves would be returning Donna and the others home until Christmas. Another five weeks after that until they returned to Earth again.

Ganbri would be two months old by then. That should be enough time.

He and Harry had been discussing it a lot recently—how they would get back. As lovely as it was to hide away with their baby and be safe, they couldn't do it forever. Somewhere in the future there was a singular moment they had left behind where their friends were in danger and Ganbri was trying to regenerate all on his own. And Kahlia was still determined to spill their blood.

They could use the vortex manipulator to return, but they couldn't possibly take the baby to a battlefield. They both decided that their only choice was to find a way back to the TARDIS they belonged to so that they could leave Ganbri with Wilfred.

And what was he supposed to do then? Would he be ready? Could he go through with it? The snarling still echoed in his head even now, making it throb with pain with every heated breath and surge of fear. It was getting harder to keep it back now and he was certain that Harry was starting to hear it.

Those brown eyes looked at him sometimes in such a piercing way that the Doctor was sure that the noise was breaking out into the real world. Could he hear it? Did he hear the way it carried on so endlessly? Did he see the shining black or the greys shimmering to life with colour? Could he hear that damnable  _noise_?

Every day, he told himself he would rest and tomorrow he would not go but then he would wake up in the night afraid. He would lay in the dark and listen to that terrible sound in his head and he just couldn't keep away from it. He had to be ready. No matter how badly it hurt or how tired it made him, no matter how unbearable that noise became or how worried Harry got, he  _had_  to be ready. If he failed, there would be no way to save anyone.

Whatever remained of the day when he returned to that little room would just have to be enough.

He smiled and spoke happily when he made it back through the door to their haven. He held his child and tried his hardest to project how helplessly and desperately he loved that tiny form without letting Ganbri hear the terrible sound that plagued him. He kissed Harry and crouched next to his chair, poking at him and bothering him until he finally put his book down to pay the Doctor some attention.

Harry was still a bit uncomfortable with how his chest looked because it was clear now that it would leave a dreadful scar, but he was slowly getting over it. The Doctor was learning how to become just as dextrous with his crooked fingers as he was before, not being too fond of the idea of cutting them off again to reattach them properly.

They'd noticed by now that Ganbri didn't process time energy normally. The first time that baby lit up in his sleep both Time Lords damn near had heart attacks. But Ganbri shimmered away and expelled the energy harmlessly—no damage, no regeneration. The Doctor performed several tests and found nothing to worry about. It seemed the unusual surges of energy during the birth had somewhat disrupted Ganbri's circuits and his body was absorbing as much time energy as it pleased just to throw out the excess later.

Starlight, Harry called it. The Doctor supposed he must have been right. After that, whenever he got up in the night to tend to the baby while Harry slept away, he found himself automatically turning to the same old song from home.

_Light bringer, life bringer, star of a billion joys. Bathe the darkness, seed the void, and birth us another day._

It wasn't really a lullaby. Actually, he was never really sure what might have been the true purpose of that odd old song, but he sang it anyway. In Gallifreyan, the words sounded lovely together and the star spoken of was a ganbri, so it worked really. He supposed anyone who would know enough to think it odd were all dead anyway so what did it matter?

He might remember what he learned in school about that song if he could just focus for a moment. Mother would know. But she was dead too.

_Isn't she?_

"Doctor."

"Hmm?" He looked up and saw Harry standing beside him. How long had he been there?

"Get some sleep."

"It's only afternoon," he answered quickly, making himself smile widely. "I thought we might—"

"Listen to your Master," Harry interrupted sternly. "Go to bed."

What had he done? Did he say something? Did he do something?

"Can you hear it?" he blurted out before he could stop himself.

The look in Harry's eyes told him instantly that he shouldn't have said anything. "Is that some kind of joke?"

"No."

It took several painfully long seconds more of Harry staring at him with a very intense look of fear and anger before the pieces fit together in his head. What the hell was he saying? He found himself remembering the very heavy looks of confusion he used to see in those blue eyes so many centuries ago and it suddenly made sense to him.

"I think I'd better go to bed," he said quickly.

"Yes, I think you had."

Harry sounded angry. He was only worried, he supposed. That was a good thing, wasn't it? It was good to have someone to worry about you.

He dreamt of the Prowler—that restless little beast, pacing back and forth and snarling at the slightest provocation. He dreamt of the way those dark eyes stared at him when he bled, how he demanded to know exactly what had been done to the Doctor. He knew then that he was looking at a man whose protective instinct was stronger than his sense.

He should have known. He should have gone back. He should never have allowed the Prowler to remove his shield.

He woke up with a sense of fear and urgency. Somewhere, Ganbri was dying and he wasn't able to save him yet. His head still throbbed and echoed with that terrible noise, though not as badly as before. He could handle another session, he decided quickly. He would have to.

"Don't you dare."

Harry's eyes were already burning into him from across the room.

"Harry—"

"No. You're staying here today."

He tried to stand up anyway and Harry's entire body visibly tensed.

"I  _will_  knock you out if I have to."

Somehow, he went back to sleep. He didn't know how long he slept for because Harry refused to tell him, but he felt much better. The throbbing pain was down to a dull ache and that constant noise was nothing more than a whisper now. He hoped that might mean he could get back to work, but Harry stubbornly kept him prisoner for another two days.

When all traces of being unwell had passed, Harry reluctantly allowed him to begin leaving the room again, but he was kept under a much more watchful eye. He had to work much harder to keep his symptoms hidden because Harry didn't seem to understand why it was necessary.

Now that the TARDIS was only housing them and their past selves, it was much easier to get around. The little family trips to other parts of the TARDIS became more common, if only because Harry could keep an eye on the Doctor.

They relived some of their past, sneaking to the console room while their past selves were out to gaze through the doors at the worlds they once explored. They saw the black hole of Littand once more and fondly reminisced over their first 'proper date'. On days like that, it was almost possible to forget why they were hiding in the first place.

They both agreed that they had to make their move when their past selves landed in Rome, during the reign of Augustus. They needed to find a way back to their own TARDIS and their own time. If Ganbri and Jenny had planned every step, then surely leaving a message would work?

The Doctor had some connections during that time and he crept out on his own while Harry stayed with the baby to visit one of his old scholarly friends. He took his time, to make sure that his instructions were followed properly, and mentally replayed that day in his head so he could remember where his other self might be.

He told the story of Ganbri, the first Time Lord child in millennia, the only Time Lord child in existence. He told of their need to stay safe from the Nightmare when they returned to Earth, and of how they had to get back to the battle where they were needed. The next time the TARDIS would land on Earth would be Christmas Eve, 2010, when the Haephsians attacked the planet in search of the Star.

If he thought of himself a year ago, he never would have guessed that the Star was real, let alone his own child. He especially would never have guessed that it would be his own message asking for rescue that would likely led the Haephsians to Earth in search of a saviour in the first place.

The letter would be given to the Emperor for safe keeping, to be passed down from generation to generation, over the next two thousand years. Stray words were repeated, and the rumours began to spread of this mysterious being. The story would be well known in one form or another by the time that fateful Christmas came. He could only hope that Ganbri or Jenny would find the true message and lead them away from their safe haven just as they were led to it.

Until then they would count each day together as a blessing and relive some of their best memories. Ganbri grew bigger, Harry became more and more himself, and the Doctor kept hard at work until his nose bled and the headaches felt like they would split his skull open. Harry did his best to stop him when the symptoms began to show but, as time ticked away, the Doctor became less and less controllable.

He pushed himself until his head was full of noise again—that terrible, never-ending sound. He would be ready. He  _had_  to be ready. Even if he had to endure that noise for every moment of every day, getting louder and louder, getting closer and closer as his strength grew, he would not allow himself to fail. Failure would mean death on a scale he could not control.

Kahlia was right about one thing, he supposed. No matter what, this would end in blood.


	83. Harry

The Doctor was losing his mind, he was sure of it. When he got really bad, Harry forced him to stay in, but he was getting more and more resistive. And the symptoms were getting worse.

Harry would find droplets of blood in the bathroom sink or the shower floor or see the Doctor rubbing his temples and wincing in pain when he thought he wasn't being watched. Before following his own path, Harry was known for his brilliance in the telepathic field and had trained dozens of Time Lords. He knew what the exhaustion could do to a person. It could drive a person mad. It could even kill in the worst cases.

Lately, it had been a real fight to keep the Doctor away from his secret project. He would agree to stay and then sneak out the moment Harry turned his back. Once, he even had to use his own mind as a weapon to stop him. The tiniest telepathic push and the Doctor's nearly shattered mind practically crippled him with pain. Ganbri wailed for nearly an hour afterwards.

Now they had only a week left until their return to Earth and the Doctor had practically turned savage.

"You don't understand," the Doctor insisted heatedly, blood already sliding down to his lip. "I'm doing this for you. For both of you! You think I like this? You think I enjoy the headaches and the dreams and that—this fucking  _noise_?"

That was the worst part. The 'noise'. A persistent noise was not a normal part of the sufferings associated with telepathic exhaustion. Harry didn't know what it was and the Doctor refused to tell him, but whatever he was doing was filling his head with some endless and terrible sound. Harry knew what that could do to a person too.

"Let me do it," he offered quickly. "My mind is way stronger than yours. Whatever it is, I can handle it. Just tell me what to do and I'll do it."

The Doctor looked at him with wide and strange eyes—eyes that Harry could no longer read. "No," he answered quietly. "No, you can't do it. It has to be me."

"Why?"

"It's mine. It's always been mine," the Doctor answered quickly, his eyes darting around distractedly, his left hand grasping and pulling about his crooked fingers. He did that when he was nervous or stressed now, and sometimes the still healing digits would begin to bleed without him even noticing. "Ask Ghanje and he'll tell you: it's my place. My destiny, of all things—this."

"What the hell are you talking about? You sound bloody mental, you know that?" He grabbed at the Doctor's hand, pulling it away. "And stop doing that. They'll never heal with you pulling them around all the time. You're falling apart, lahrre. Tell me what to do."

The Doctor's eyes moved to gaze past him, to look at the bassinet where Ganbri lay quietly. " _I_ have to do it."

" _Why_?"

"Because I didn't go back!"

Guilt. Of course. What else should he have expected? He watched as the Doctor slipped to the edge of his own control, hands shaking and eyes turning glossy with tears. His mind was so exhausted that he was bursting at the seams.

Harry couldn't think of anything else to do except hug him. His poor Doctor. He'd been losing people his whole life and he always found a way to make it his own fault. The Doctor had always blamed himself for the day Andior drowned because he was the one who convinced him to come down the mountain to play in the woods with them. He blamed himself when Sahrrea died in that awful accident because she had always asked him to teach her how to properly maintain her ship. He didn't take enough care of his mother, he didn't go back for Qhoya, he didn't try to stop the Master from leaving. It was always something he had or hadn’t done.

The Doctor stood stiffly in his arms, trembling from head to toe and breathing erratically. "I need you to stop this," he said quietly into the Doctor's ear. "Ganbri needs you."

"I'll stop," the Doctor promised. "As soon as he's safe."

"Doctor—"

"It's one more week," the Doctor insisted, stepping out of Harry's grip so that he could pull a handkerchief from his pocket and wipe the blood off his face. "Just one more week and I swear I'll stop."

Thankfully, the Doctor came to bed after that without a fuss. Harry decided to ignore how much the ugly skin on his chest bothered him and pulled the Doctor in close to rest against it. He tried to help by trying to let his mind send soothing thoughts to the Doctor, but a barely audible groan quickly told him that even that was painful for him. Instead, he brought Ganbri into the bed with them.

The tiny baby lay curled up in a very comfortable looking ball on Harry's stomach, mere inches away from where the Doctor's head was resting on his chest. Harry let his fingers curl through that dark hair and smiled as he listened to the Doctor speak to their child, just as he did before he was even born. That seemed to soothe the Doctor better than anything and certainly soothed Ganbri.

Before long, both had fallen asleep. It was only then that Harry realized he had absolutely no chance of getting back out of the bed without waking either of them, so he went to sleep too. When he woke, the Doctor was gone again.

He was just as twitchy when he returned, but he was trying harder to hide it now. Sometimes the noise in his head grew to be too much and he would lock himself away in the bathroom for a while under the guise of taking a shower but, the rest of the time, he was either glued to Harry's side or carrying Ganbri around like he was the most precious thing in the world.

With three days to go until their departure, the Doctor cut his little outing surprisingly short. When Harry usually woke up alone and had an hour to himself, on that day he woke up to the sound of the Doctor returning. They had breakfast together, took the baby for a stroll through the TARDIS, borrowed a couple of old videos from one of the rooms and watched them that evening wrapped up in blankets, side by side on the bed.

The next day, Harry woke with the Doctor still beside him. He was perfectly awake and reading a book, but the messy hair and lack of day clothes proved that he had not simply left and come back. Once he realized that Harry was awake, the book was quickly tossed aside in favour of some more intimate activities. It felt a little strange not to be allowed into the Doctor's mind at all—even as he watched the Doctor squirm beneath him, clearly losing himself to his more primitive instincts, it felt like there was a solid wall stopping Harry from connecting with him mentally.

The Doctor clung to him afterwards like he had on their first night together, like someone who was starved for affection and intimacy. Even after Harry got up to get some breakfast, the Doctor stayed in bed, casually chatting away from across the room. He only got up when Ganbri started crying and, even then, he only threw on a robe instead of getting dressed.

It was a wonderful sight to see really—the Doctor relaxing for once and just being himself, cradling Ganbri and talking in to him in that special voice he reserved just for the baby. But it was unsettling at the same time. Harry would have liked to have thought that it was all innocent, that it was just a good day for sleeping in and doing nothing, but he knew his Doctor too well.

Only two days now.

It was much the same the next day—their last day. Though the Doctor did leave to tend to whatever it was that he did when he left, he waited until after Harry woke up to go and was back within a half an hour. The muscles around his eyes were still relaxed when he returned, so his head was not hurting him. He smiled easy and was his usual, high-energy self, so the 'noise' was not plaguing him. He was not regularly touching his face or glancing at his reflection, so he obviously wasn't worried about getting a nosebleed.

They took Ganbri on another adventure through the TARDIS that day. They wandered aimlessly through the infinite hallways, talking about anything other than what was to happen tomorrow. First, they went to the concert hall, showing off their skill with different instruments to each other and discovering what sort of sounds Ganbri responded best to. Then a walk through one of the many gardens and a short trip to what the Doctor called his Not-Yet room, where he kept all his failed experiments and inventions.

"They haven't  _failed_ ," the Doctor protested when Harry referred to them as such. "I just don't know how to fix them yet. That's why they're the Not-Yets. Maybe Ganbri will fix some of them for me when he's older."

It was a comment that made Harry chuckle and shake his head but, not long afterwards, he spotted a staff that was cracked open and looked suspiciously bigger on the inside.

Before he knew what had happened, the day was ending. They crept back to their little safe room and Harry was told to relax while the Doctor bathed and changed Ganbri. Vanilla and cinnamon tea, a game of chess that they would never finish, and an overly enthusiastic Doctor dragging him to bed later, the dread was sinking in.

They were leaving in the morning. They wouldn't be safe. Ganbri would not be safe. It all seemed so far away until now. And the Doctor's sudden change in behaviour was more worrying than when he was acting crazy. Taking time to enjoy the little things and do nothing, the sudden increase in the need for affection, it was all very reminiscent of the way he behaved right before he allowed himself to be taken by Kahlia's soldiers.

Harry glanced down at where the Doctor was resting against his chest, clutching him like a drowning man despite his calm appearance.

"Doctor," he said quietly. "I want to ask you a question and I want you to tell me the truth."

He felt the Doctor stiffen up a bit though he tried to hide it. "Okay."

"This plan of yours . . . does it involve you coming back?"

"Of course."

Too quick. Too easy to say. The Doctor took half a second to tell a lie and half a century to speak the truth. Unless the Doctor just thought it was so obvious that he didn't even need the few seconds to filter his words. That could be it, couldn't it?

"If that's a lie," he answered, finding it surprisingly difficult to get the words out. "You change it. You don't get to do that anymore."

"Okay."

"Promise," he said sternly.

The Doctor shifted a little, his crooked fingers bending and stretching against Harry's skin. "I'll come back."

He tried to sleep. Tried. He could tell by the way the Doctor's fingers fidgeted sometimes that he was awake too. All he could think about was what was going to happen next. He knew that he and the Doctor had different plans for their return, but how far would they each go to see them through?

The Doctor never said it directly, but Harry knew what his intentions were. Kahlia was and always would be a threat to their family in his eyes and he wanted her gone. Harry knew he could save her if he could just talk to her properly.

He could be her father properly now, if that was what she wanted. He could make it all up or at least spend his life trying to. The drumming was gone, he had a family, he was settled—she could be a part of that. With the Doctor at his side, he could help her through the madness that plagued her. He could make her better. He could bring her back to that beautiful little girl he once knew, if only she would let him.

But the Doctor knew how he felt because he had felt the same way. How many people suffered and died because of that desperation? Harry remembered himself when the drums still beat—knowing that he could always count on the Doctor's love to save him, even though he always planned to turn around and bite back. Kahlia was his daughter and her bite was just as murderous. The Doctor knew that too.

He buried his face in the Doctor's hair and squeezed his arms around him a little tighter. The Doctor readily squeezed back and he felt a little kiss land on his chest.

So that was what it was going to come down to. At the end of this all, he would have to stand against the Doctor once more.

They were quiet in the morning while they gathered up what they would be taking with them. The Doctor picked out his best suit and spent a long time shaving and fixing up his hair. He always wanted to look his best when he had to do something difficult. Harry followed his example, carefully grooming his face and hair, though he decided a suit didn't exactly match his shotgun holster and belt full of knives. He dug through their closet until he found a pair of grey cargo pants, a black T-shirt, and a black coat just long enough to hide his weapons.

"What do you think?" he asked the Doctor, adjusting his belt of knives. "Not exactly a suit."

"Probably more appropriate though," the Doctor answered, eying him up and down. "It's . . . rugged."

"Rugged?"

It was then he noticed the Doctor was looking at the weapons he was carrying. "In a good way." He stepped forward and around to look at Harry from behind, reaching forward to adjust his belt a bit for him and brush the dust off his coat. "Handsome."

Other than the odd comment like that, not a word was whispered. The silence was unbearable and heavy with the thoughts that neither of them wanted to express. Ganbri seemed to sense the uneasiness as he was unusually fussy as Harry wrapped him up in his blankets and set him in his basket.

They sat and watched the monitor on the wall until their past selves entered the console room. The TARDIS wailed and shook as they flew through time and space, returning to Earth. Then they waited a while longer, until they knew everyone would be well away, before they picked up and left their safe haven for the last time.

The Doctor barely spoke a word, but Harry supposed he didn't either. They stepped into the control room and checked the monitors to make sure there was no one outside before they opened the doors.

Harry looked out at the chilly winter's day and clutched Ganbri's basket protectively. "He's never left the TARDIS," he muttered quietly. "This will be the first planet he's ever really been on."

The Doctor smiled a little. "Officially an Earthling then."

It hadn't really sunk in until now. Ganbri would never see Gallifrey.

They stepped out and hurried down the street, away from the TARDIS, or Wilfred's house, or anywhere their past selves might have gone. The Doctor said that there was a church nearby they were supposed to go to.

Somewhere in the sky was a Tetchdian ship prepared to turn the Earth to flame and ash for the sake of the child they were trying to protect.  _It is now_ , they had insisted. They all thought the Tetchdians were mad then but now Harry just felt sorry for them. They had been right after all.

The church was not far and they reached it before long, choosing to stand near the entrance. The land surrounding it was rather open and most of the trees had been cleared away, which Harry was thankful for because it meant they would see anyone coming toward them. Not that there was anyone to see. The streets, the church, and the park-like field surrounding it were completely abandoned. The only place he saw any activity was in the Town Hall across the street, and even there it was only a couple of cars parked outside.

Ganbri whimpered a little unhappily, lips wobbling with the threat to cry, and a few traces of golden light drifted up from his basket like a cloud. "What if someone sees him?" Harry asked, awkwardly trying to twist the basket on his arm so that his body would block the baby from view as much as possible.

"It's Christmas. Just say it's a fancy decoration trick or something. There's nobody out here anyway."

The odd person did walk down the street as they waited, and each one stared at them across the open ground. It must have been a strange sight—two men and a baby, standing out in the cold when everyone else was clearly smart enough to stay home and out of harm's way.

Any minute now the next warning would come, and this one would include the threat to the planet. What if they were somehow able to track Ganbri's time energy? What if they already knew where he was?

The Doctor pecked an unexpected kiss on his cheek. "We stopped them, lahrre. Ganbri will be safe."

Just as the Doctor was beginning to fidget nervously and Harry was beginning to worry that their call might go unanswered, they felt a stir in the air. The TARDIS sounded like every part of her was grinding against the others as she materialized, struggling to land and screaming all the way. Ganbri started to cry and Harry saw the Doctor nervously looking around to make sure there was no one to notice what was happening.

Finally, that beautiful blue box stood solidly on the ground, groaning from the effort. The door creaked open and Harry suddenly felt the weight of everything lift when those blue eyes peered out at them.

"Boys!"

The Doctor instinctively took Ganbri's basket from Harry's hands, allowing him to hurry forward to those open arms. "Grandfather."

Harry knew he'd missed the old man, but he didn't realize quite how much until right then. Somehow, he felt a thousand times better about everything just knowing that Wilfred would be there.

"It's alright, lad," Wilfred chuckled, clapping Harry on the back a couple of times. "I just saw you a moment ago! Let me see the Doctor."

"Yes, of course," he said quickly, stepping back to take the basket from the Doctor now.

"He's just excited," the Doctor said with a smile as Wilfred stepped into his open arms for his hug. "It's been two months for us."

"Two months?" Wilfred's eyes snapped around immediately back to Harry. "Harry, you're—" His eyes suddenly noticed the basket he was holding. "Oh!"

"Let's get inside then," the Doctor chuckled. "We'll show you."

As expected, Wilf's eyes welled with tears the moment Harry had set the basket down so he could get a good look. He gasped joyfully and covered his mouth when Harry lifted the baby out, and tears streamed down his wrinkled face when Ganbri was placed in his arms.

"Oh, my word," the old man whimpered happily. "He's just so beautiful. You boys—oh, my lovely boys, look at him!"

The Doctor gave them a few minutes before he began asking questions. Wilfred explained that, the moment the TARDIS doors shut behind Harry and the others, he received a message from the Star that told him to ignore the instructions he'd been given on how to move the TARDIS. He was given new instructions.

"They told me that it was a rescue mission," Wilf said quickly. "They said to save Harold Mott and John Noble. Harry said that if they knew those names they were friends, so I listened. But they did say I was supposed to rescue the Star too, but I don't know what he—"

Wilfred stopped and his eyes travelled once more to Ganbri. He stared at the baby without blinking for a moment before his hand came up to cover his mouth in disbelief.

"He's back on Kahlia's ship," the Doctor said quietly. "All grown up. They were keeping him prisoner with me and some others. I didn't know who he was. Nobody did. We, um . . . we named him Ganbri, which means ‘star’ in our language."

Wilfred clutched Ganbri a little tighter to his chest, swallowing hard. "Ganbri," he repeated the name quietly. "And . . . and where is he now?"

"Still there," Harry answered miserably.

"He's been shot. He's regenerating," the Doctor said, his voice suddenly sounding cold as he quickly began moving around the console, hitting buttons and changing settings. "We're going back to save him."

Wilfred nodded, his face being the perfect picture of shock. "Ganbri," he repeated again quietly, turning his gaze back down at the baby. "Ganbri what?"

Harry looked up. He hadn't really thought about that part. He glanced over at the Doctor, who bore an expression that suggested he was thinking the same thing. The Star's messengers referred to the Doctor as John Noble, so he supposed that was the name he was going to adopt for himself in the near future.

"Noble, I suppose," Harry said with a little uncertainty. "Isn't it?"

"Noble-Mott," the Doctor answered quickly, lifting his left hand to show off his wedding ring in imitation of Donna. "Married now."

Harry chuckled a bit and the Doctor smiled at him in return. It was then he noticed that the Doctor's other hand was hovering over one of the console levers. They were ready to leave. They were  _supposed_  to be leaving. It was hard to imagine that it was actually happening now.

"I need you to watch him, Grandfather," Harry said quickly. "I need you to take care of him now so that we can make sure he comes home in the future. We have to go save him."

"What? Right now?" Wilf sputtered in disbelief, looking nervously from Harry to the Doctor. " _Right now_?"

"Right now," the Doctor nodded. "I left him behind, Wilf. He's in pain and he's not safe. He needs us."

"Um, I—well, I, uh . . ." Wilf swallowed again, his wrinkled hands holding Ganbri firmly against his chest and nervously rubbing at the baby's back. "Okay."

"Thank you," the Doctor said, then turned his eyes to meet Harry's. "Ready?"

He smiled a bit nervously. "No."

The Doctor pulled the lever.

Landing back on Kahlia's ship felt like a dream. It was so surreal that the flight and the landing just went by in a blur. Harry could hear shouts and gunfire coming through the TARDIS doors. Were they really back in the battle, just like that?

The Doctor snapped his fingers and Harry turned to look as the doors opened. He could see him, just out there. Ganbri, with his short black hair and his fierce brown eyes, on his knees in a pool of his own blood and shining like a golden sun. His shirt was entirely soaked through with deep red, his whole body heaving with the effort to breathe. Harry could see that his hand was clasped around the telepathic amplifier that he'd left with him.

That was good. At least it would help him to not be afraid.

Harry could see wasted bullets scattered on the ground around Ganbri, but not a single one had gotten closer than three feet. He must have reset the program on his shield. Harry quickly reached for the button on his wrist band and activated his own shield.

He'd only been looking at Ganbri for a second and somehow his body had completely flooded with adrenaline and paternal instinct. The gunshots were loud and the baby behind him began to scream immediately. He glanced back to make eye contact with the Doctor and then they both flew.

He supposed he should have known. The Doctor had opened the door from a distance with a snap of fingers and, even though he had much longer legs, he somehow stayed behind Harry as they ran to the door. He raced out into that blood covered hallway, the sound of bullets hitting his shield almost deafening.

But it wasn't loud enough to block out the sound of the TARDIS door slamming shut behind him.

He felt something heavy drop in his stomach and looked back. The Doctor wasn't there.

"Doctor!" he shouted back at the TARDIS. " _Doctor_!"

But the TARDIS began to wail and fade away and it was too late. Ganbri's body was going to burst with time energy at any moment and, if he didn't take his shield down, it would have nowhere to go. Harry had no choice but focus on his son now and let the Doctor be damned.

He reached behind him pull his shotgun from its holster and felt something had been slipped in there with it. He pulled it out and found that the Doctor had hidden a compact grenade blaster in his belt. No bigger than a pen, but strong enough to take out five men with one shot.

"Oh, lahrre," he grumbled, turning towards the horde of soldiers and pointing the tiny device at them. "You son of a bitch."


	84. Wilfred

"Doctor!" Wilfred shouted. "Doctor, what are you doing!?"

He had watched as the two Time Lords bolted for the door, running towards the gunfire and death. Then he watched as the Doctor slammed the door shut behind Harry and locked it. He cried out in confusion and panic as the Doctor rushed back to the console, holding Ganbri carefully as he hurried towards the doors.

"Wilfred Mott, if you try to open those doors, I  _will_  stop you," the Doctor shouted at him in a voice Wilf had never heard him use before. "Now hold on to something!"

Wilfred gripped the hand railing as the TARDIS roared to life and sputtered helplessly. "But Harry's out there by himself! What about Ganbri? What about your plan!?"

"That's Harry's plan," the Doctor answered too calmly as he rushed around the console. "This is mine."

"But where are we going!?"

The TARDIS came to a stop, humming excitedly as she powered down. Wilf could see the wild look in the Doctor's eyes, the way he was already breathing heavily.

"We're still on the ship," the Doctor answered almost breathlessly. "Just on the other side of it and twenty minutes back in time."

"Whatever for?" Wilfred insisted. "Doctor, what the hell are you doing?"

The Doctor looked him in the eye, opened his mouth as though he were going to say something, then turned and ran from the room. Wilfred hurried after him, trying his best to run while protectively clutching to the screaming baby in his arms. All he could think about was how the last fifteen minutes of his life had been the most bizarre and abrupt moments he'd ever experienced.

"Harry can handle those soldiers on his own," the Doctor called back to him as they rushed through the TARDIS halls. "He can take care of Ganbri and I'll take care of Kahlia."

They turned down a hallway Wilfred had never explored before and he Doctor came to a stop at the third door. It was a simple wooden door—paint faded in some areas, chipped in others, and a deep crack running down a good portion of it. It looked like a simple door you'd find on the closet of a very old and ill-kept house.

" 'Take care' of her how?"

The Doctor looked at him with that dreadful, heavy look in his eyes and pushed the door open. "Take Ganbri somewhere else on the ship and wait for us to come back."

The Doctor stepped through the doorway and Wilf stood outside, shifting from one foot to the other. His head was still trying to catch up with what was happening and Ganbri was still crying. After a moment, he made up his mind and followed the Doctor.

Inside was an enormous, gleaming white room. It was nearly empty, save for a chair by the wall, a long and heavy looking chain in one corner, and a great, glass dome in the center of the floor. The dome was filled with an odd, pale blue mist but Wilfred could see that there was something inside. Something big.

"I told you to go somewhere else," the Doctor said quietly.

"I'm not going anywhere just yet. What is that thing?"

"It's mine," the Doctor answered simply.

He seemed to be taking a moment to compose himself, taking a few deep breaths and pulling at the fingers on his right hand. Finally, he stepped forward and touched his hand to the glass. The huge dark shape in the mist stirred and lights appeared beneath the Doctor's fingers. He performed a few complicated looking movements on the glass until a loud click echoed through the air. The mist began to swirl and slip away into nothing.

"They call it the Beast of Junicar," the Doctor explained calmly. "I don't know what it is or where it came from, but the people it hunted believed it was a sort of hell hound Junicar set on them for punishment. It created the Ennyeshan Death Forests and was responsible for an entire civilization cowering under a vengeful god for centuries. Its simple existence drove people to sacrifice their children and people to abandon their friends to die. It can't be killed or, at least, I've never found out how to keep it dead, and it's next to impossible to stop. All I’ve been able to do is keep it locked in here."

Wilfred watched in horror as the Doctor told him these things and the blue mist kept clearing away. The glass dome suddenly cracked open at the top and began to glide open like a flower coming to bloom.

"Then why are you letting it out!?"

Ganbri was still crying and the Doctor didn't seem to notice. Maybe he should just take the baby and run?

"Because it's mine," the Doctor whispered in return as the dark mass moved again. "The Beast never stopped for anyone, never showed mercy, never hesitated until it met me."

Suddenly the air filled with a terrible sound. A fierce and gut-twisting growl that was more than just a sound in the room—it felt like it was inside Wilfred’s head, taking over his very thoughts. He felt his heart rate going, every muscle coming alive and preparing for action. Ganbri screamed even louder.

"Doctor, what's happening?" Wilf asked, in a bit of a panic now.

"It's a telepath, Wilfred. It's projecting that sound straight into your mind because it'll make you afraid. That's how it hunts."

The dome slid completely open and the last of the mist cleared away. The Beast was the size of a large horse, though its shape looked somewhat like an enormous dog with a long, whip-like tail swishing impatiently behind it. The skin on its snout looked almost as though it had been cut or rotted away, keeping its face frozen in a constant snarl, its teeth gleaming in the light. Its whole face looked skeletal really, with only a pair of holes where a nose might be, tiny holes for ears, and its dull, grey skin clinging to what looked like nothing but bone.

Next, Wilfred noticed its tiny black eyes, shining like two beetles in its face. Its neck seemed to have some kind of mane about it, but Wilf couldn't properly work it out. It almost looked like there were tiny rib-like bones, running from its skull to its shoulder, all around the circumference of its neck with folds of skin in between. Its great, curved claws clicked against the floor as its toes stretched and flexed.

It was then that he noticed the Doctor's fingers were moving in the same way.

He glanced back and forth between them. The Beast was twisting its head this way and that like it was trying to shake a bird from its back, snarling all the while, as the Doctor simply stared at it with a strange intensity.

"So that's who you are now, is it?" Wilf asked, pushing himself against the wall and holding Ganbri tight. "A vengeful god?"

The corner of the Doctor's mouth tugged upwards. "You're the only person who'd be surprised."

The Beast stomped its feet and roared, its claws clicking threateningly against the floor and its tail whipping back and forth in agitation. Its skin seemed to ripple in the light, changing colours constantly. The dull, withered grey suddenly turned to a solid black, an odd pink, a remarkable imitation of brown scales, growling louder and louder with each change.

It was trying to scare off the Doctor, he realized, changing its skin to find something that might frighten him. The terrible snarl echoed through Wilfred's mind, ever louder as the Beast grew more agitated, but the Doctor did not move. Finally, the Doctor reached his hand out towards the monster and touched its snout. The Beast recoiled at the touch, snorting angrily and stepping backwards.

The Doctor smiled ever so slightly. He stepped towards the corner where the chain was coiled up and lifted it, then took it back over to the Beast and pulled at the strange flap of skin on its neck. The mane shot open almost instantly, fanning out and quivering like the frill of some bizarre lizard, revealing a chain collar that had been sitting underneath.

The Doctor latched the chain to it and began to walk towards the door, the horse-sized predator following him with little fuss. "It's taken me weeks to build a strong enough connection to control this thing," he said quietly as he passed Wilfred. "Even if I die, Kahlia won't be able to stop it."

"Doctor, this isn't right," Wilfred insisted, hurrying after him. "This isn't  _you_."

"Why isn't it me?" the Doctor snapped, the Beast snarling viciously alongside him as they made their way to the console room.

"The man I know would have chosen to die than to take a gun in his hand to save himself—"

"I am  _not_  doing this for myself!" he shouted, and the Beast roared and whipped its head around to bare its teeth, skin flaring up with bright red.

"And what about that woman at Christmas?" Wilf asked, desperate now. "The one who changed your mind when you saw her. I saw the way you looked at her and suddenly you thought of another way. What would she tell you now?"

"I don't what she would say, Wilf, because she's dead," the Doctor answered with a low growl. "I made sure of that, remember?"

Wilfred looked into those brown eyes and saw that they were so full of fear there was no room left for mercy. Ganbri screamed terribly, kicking his tiny feet and releasing an odd golden light. Wilfred instinctively pulled him closer, wrapping his arms around the tiny form protectively.

The Doctor's eyes gazed at the child with all the weight in the world in them. "You tell me what you wouldn't do for him," he said quietly, the faintest glimmer of moisture appearing in his eyes. "What wouldn't you do for Harry? For Sylvia or Donna? Would you let them die just for the sake of sparing your own conscience?"

"Doctor—"

"I have sacrificed enough," he interrupted sternly. "I am not giving up another family. I am not giving up my son."

He reached his hand out and touched it to Ganbri's head, his fingers gently stroking the soft black hair. The Beast let out a quiet whimper and pulled in its tail in close but Ganbri stopped crying. He sat there, still red in the face and cheeks wet with tears, and grew quiet within seconds.

"What about Harry?" Wilf barely whispered.

The Doctor looked him in the eye without the faintest trace of remorse. "He will live."

There was nothing Wilfred could think to say after that. He followed behind the Doctor quietly, holding Ganbri close and giving him an encouraging pat when he let out the occasional whimper. They entered the console room silently, and the Beast sat still and quiet while the Doctor marched up to the controls and hit a few buttons.

"Are we moving?" Wilfred asked, glancing nervously at the doors where he could clearly hear a dozen voices coming from the other side.

"No," the Doctor answered, pulling his screwdriver from his pocket and pointing it at the source of the noise.

There was a loud whirring sound and then everything suddenly went quiet. The windows went dark and whatever men had gathered outside began to chatter in nervous voices.

The Doctor led the Beast to the door and removed the chain from its collar.

"Doctor, I'm going to ask you one more time," Wilfred begged. "Please don't do this."

The Doctor didn't even look at him. He dropped the chains on the floor beside them and patted the Beast on its side. The great monster quivered and snorted in anticipation.

Then he snapped his fingers.

The doors flew open, revealing the dark hallway outside. Without a second's hesitation the Beast's skin lit up with red and yellows as though it were on fire, its mane flying open with a tremendous roar, before it burst through the open doorway to the screams that welcomed it.

The Doctor stood in the doorway and watched what was happening beyond them for a moment until Ganbri began to cry again.

"Thank you, Grandfather," he whispered.

Then he stepped out into the hallway and closed the doors behind him without looking back.


	85. Harry

For a minute, Harry didn't think he would be able to do it. The grenade blaster had already used all of its charge and the soldiers just kept coming. Ganbri was struggling to hold back the regeneration until he could drop his shield, but the amount of light filling the hallway was proof that his efforts were beginning to falter.

He resorted to dropping his own shield and going for quick take downs, just hoping that they would stay put until Ganbri was finished. He'd slam the butt of his shotgun into one man's face and use his other hand to drive a knife into another's neck. There were only a handful left, so he grabbed the nearest soldier off the ground to use as a shield, then took the man's gun to spray some bullets at the few fools who were left.

"Ganbri, now!"

He wished he could have looked back at this son's face just once more before it changed, but there was no time. While soldiers fell before him, the golden light erupted. Harry was blind. Somewhere in the tendrils of shimmering yellow and orange, he heard Ganbri let out a pained cry, his voice changing part way through. He felt the heat at his back, the force of it pushing him forward with such violence that he fell to his knees.

He stayed on the ground until the storm passed, noticing with a dazed interest that the only thing he could really see through the light was the blood dripping from the knife in his hand. One more surge of raw energy and one more shout full of effort in that alien voice and the light suddenly vanished without a trace.

Harry blinked away the stars in his eyes, trying to find his bearings again.

"I can still breathe. Oh, good," he heard a new and deeper voice mutter. "What's this in my eye? Is that  _hair_? Why is my hair so long?"

"Ganbri?" he called out, still not quite able to see.

There was a sudden silence and he was sure that Ganbri probably looked like a deer in headlights. A moment passed when all he could hear was his own breathing and then, just as his eyes began to adjust again, there were quick footsteps, a hard sound of impact, and something hot splattered across Harry's face.

He felt no pain, but his hands felt around on his chest anyway. It couldn't have been him. He looked up as the blinding light shifted to other colours and silhouettes. Ganbri slowly came into view, breathing hard and looking more than a little confused.

His skin was much paler than before with faint traces of freckles on his cheeks, but his eyes were the same deep brown. Not quite as muscular as before, but a bit taller and with slightly softer features. His stark black hair had turned to waves of auburn and was just long enough to cover most of his ears and hang just above his eyes.

He looked down at Harry with a bit of a guilty expression on his face as the blade of his staff dripped with fresh blood. There was a soldier on the floor barely even a foot away, twitching as the last of his life drained out on the floor.

"What are we doing?" Ganbri whispered quietly.

Harry didn't have a chance to answer as a loud thumping noise filled the air. He turned around and Ganbri instinctively lifted his staff in preparation for a fight.

It was Shaun.

On the other side of the force field, Shaun was slamming his fists against the invisible wall. It flickered as it was hit and quickly revealed that the edges were weak. A couple of the hubs build into the wall to support the field had been damaged by the explosive energy of Ganbri's regeneration. Without hesitation, Shaun pointed his plasma cannon at the wall where the damaged hubs sat and fired.

Harry shielded his face with his hands to protect himself from any debris, a bit surprised when he opened his eyes to find that Ganbri had moved in front of him.

"Where's the TARDIS?" Shaun shouted, charging past the ruined force field. "I heard it land. Where did it go?"

"It's gone," Harry answered wearily, suddenly feeling so very old as Ganbri took hold of his arm and helped him to his feet. "The Doctor took it. He's gone after Kahlia."

There was something oddly wild about the way Shaun's eyes scanned the hallway, like a cornered animal looking for a way out. It took him far too long to notice the unfamiliar face in the room.

"Who's that?" he asked, raising his cannon again.

"I-I was with the prisoners," Ganbri answered with some uncertainty while he used his fingers to feel along his own, new jaw line.

"He's my kid," Harry answered instead. "New face."

Shaun looked at them both like they were insane, opened his mouth as though he were going to ask another question, then shook his head. "Whatever," he said, dropping his cannon back at his side. "I need to get Donna to the TARDIS."

"What's going on? I thought you guys were being teleported out?"

"That was the plan," Shaun answered irritably, moving quickly to a control panel in the wall. "The medical team was looking us over and you two just vanished. They didn't know what was wrong with Donna and in the whole two minutes it took to find out, we got hit. I don't know what it was, but it seemed like an E.M.P. or something. The ships are crippled and the teleports are useless. We're stuck."

Harry kept a careful eye on Ganbri as Shaun spoke, watching the way he flexed his fingers and adjusted to his new body as he moved among the corpses. "Is Donna okay?" he asked as Ganbri paused to reach down and close Sevil's eyes.

"Oh, yeah," Shaun answered in an exasperated tone as he tried to make the control panel obey him. "You know, just stress, a bit of dehydration, and pregnancy."

"What?"

"We didn't know," Shaun said quietly. "Do one of you know how to work this bloody thing?"

"Tokrah," Ganbri said, gesturing towards the control panel. "We're going to need the others."

Ganbri didn't wait for an answer before he picked up Sevil's body as though she weighed nothing, cradling her like a sleeping child, and hurried towards the docked ships. Harry stepped up to the console and broke into the system while Shaun kept his cannon pointed down the empty hallway, in case they were getting any more visitors.

The ship's sensors quickly revealed that an entire wing of the ship was running on emergency power and thought that might be a good place to start. Sensors were picking up gunfire and another, unidentified sound. There were dozens of heat signatures that weren't moving at all and were quickly cooling down, and dozens more that seemed to be moving around frantically.

There was a heat signature for something enormous that was moving very quickly, darting back and forth between the other life forms before it. Every heat signature in the hallway behind it was motionless and cooling except for one. One tiny little red dot, moving calmly and slowly down a path that must have been thick with blood. How could it be anyone else?

"It's on the other side," he said, his voice coming out a bit thick as he pointed at the map on the screen. "If we cut through this section here, we should be able to get there in a few minutes."

He watched the little red dot move off to the side of the hallway and pause, the great monstrosity continuing its work. Then suddenly the screen went black. It didn't kick him out of the system or give him an error code, it just died.

The air crackled and then a sound ripped through the silence, so terrible that a shiver ran down Harry's spine. He could hear gunshots and screaming in the background as the sound system came to life, and that awful snarling was louder than all of it.

The Doctor's voice was completely cold when it spoke. "I would advise anyone on decks seventeen to twenty-five to evacuate as quickly as possible," he announced, seemingly completely unaware of the horrific sounds that were coming through the speakers with him. "Within the next three minutes would be wise, as that's when they're going to be jettisoned into space and blown up. Thank you."

The world went silent again, but Harry was certain he could still hear that monstrous growling in his head. Shaun was looking at him with widened eyes and a tense face but said nothing.

"Decks seventeen to twenty-five are military," a voice spoke up. "Armouries, weapons decks, vehicles. He's trying to cripple her army."

It was clear by the state of the Alreesh's wound that Ganbri had attempted to heal him and failed to do so thoroughly. The long, bloody line was easy to see through the thick black curls, running from the corner of his eye, around the top of his skull, all the way to the base of his neck. It was not healed, but it was at least closed.

"What did you say your name was?" Harry asked, still trying to banish the snarling from his thoughts.

"Jack," the Alreesh answered with a smirk, cracking his neck and spinning a staff in his hand that looked just like Ganbri's. "Nista, if you can remember it."

The others were coming up behind him now. The Ginu'un man looked pale but he did look much better than he had before, and he was walking on his own now. The large woman with the Haephsian tattoo was in fine condition, but she seemed to have forsaken her earlier decisions regarding weapons, as she was now wielding a sledge hammer and had a small pistol on her hip. Ganbri was beside Donna with a look of determination on his face, even though he also looked a bit unwell and still confused. The Haephsian priests followed behind them all, armed to the teeth and more than ready for a fight.

Before Harry had a chance to say anything, Boris's black shadow and Ghanje's bright light raced past him and down the hallway they would need to follow. They would do their best to make sure the path was clear, he was sure. Then he felt something heavy hit him in the chest and looked up to see Captain Jack looking far too excited about what was happening.

"I don't know what the hell you've been up to in the last five minutes," Jack said enthusiastically, landing another, lighter punch on Harry's chest. "But it seems to me like you vanished into thin air and apparently had a baby. What the fuck happened to the Doctor? The guy charges in, says 'sorry, new face', then lights up the room like a goddamn Christmas tree. He said he only had enough energy left to get everyone back on their feet but why didn't he just bring the TARDIS and get them all out?"

"That's not the Doctor."

"What are you talking about? Is he  _you_?"

"He's the Star."

"He's a Time Lord!" Jack's face was full of exasperation but, after a moment of Harry glaring at him, his eyes flicked down to Harry's now flat chest. "Shit."

"Yeah."

"Alright. Rule one then," Jack announced loudly, turning back to their small group of improvised soldiers. "Pregnant ladies and kids, stay behind the immortal guy."

"I'm fine to fight," Nista protested, stepping forward quickly and looking Jack in the eye defiantly.

"The Haephsians are my army," Ganbri added, stepping forward as well. "I need to lead them."

"We are the fire," the Haephsian priests said together.

"Look, I don't  _care_  who stands where," Shaun interrupted loudly. "I need to get my  _wife_  and my  _unborn child_  to safety. Stand wherever you like, but we need to move.  _Now_."

Harry had to get Ganbri to the TARDIS. There was no way that Kahlia wouldn't find out about Ganbri's regeneration somehow. If she knew he was there, she wouldn't stop until he was dead. He had to get Ganbri off the ship.

Ganbri's staff whirred and clicked, turning and changing until it was gleaming white. It kept it's long, thin blade but the way Ganbri held it and the appearance of a trigger showed that it was meant to be rifle now. Nista kept his staff the way it was, but the way his tongue slipped along his dark lips and the edges of his enormous fangs made Harry think he didn't intend to use it much.

They moved as quickly as a group their size could manage. Soon, they began to pass skeletons and bodies that were either twisted and burned in grotesque ways or else blue from suffocation. Boris and Ghanje were working well together it seemed.

But, while those two kept the way ahead clear, soldiers were still appearing from other directions. They encountered a Ginu'un squad fighting a group of Nightmare men and joined in. A few words from Brody at the end of it and they added eleven more men to their group.

 _We are the fire. We are the thunder._ They chanted and cheered as though this was all a game. The priests truly believed that they couldn't possibly die with the Star beside them and the Ginu'uns seemed to think it would be a wonderful thing to die in battle beside Brody.

They were all fools as far as Harry was concerned.

Suddenly the entire ship rocked, knocking nearly everyone off their feet. The screams of grinding and breaking metal vibrated through the walls and nearly deafened them. Had it really only been three minutes?

"Everybody stay down!" Jack shouted above the noise.

Boris and Ghanje flew back to them and spread out as best they could to blanket them in protection in case they had any unexpected visitors. A moment later, the dislodged decks exploded. The ship rocked again, harder this time, and they all tried their best not to slide around too much as the floor moved. Harry felt a boot or two hit him and one of the priests gave a startled shout but, when the movement stopped, everyone seemed to be okay.

Suddenly Donna grabbed Harry by his shirt collar and pulled him around to look at her. Ganbri was standing behind her, his shirt still drenched in his own blood and his eyes full of concern.

"Harry," Donna said in a strangely desperate sounding voice. "Where is the  _baby_?"

"Wha—"

"If he's not safe, if something happens to him . . . Ganbri will never have been here," she continued urgently. "We could all die.  _He_  could die. He might not even ever be born! Please tell me you weren't stupid enough to bring him here _._ "

"He's not supposed to be here. The TARDIS was supposed to leave—"

"You left him in the TARDIS!?"

"Not alone!"

There was a loud bang and the ship rocked again. It must have been the debris from the jettisoned decks.

He grabbed Donna by the shoulders, painfully aware of how carefully Ganbri was watching them. "He'll be fine. He's with Wilfred."

"Who?" Ganbri blurted.

Donna whipped around to face him so quickly that it made Ganbri jump. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN ' _WHO_ '?"

"Donna, calm down," Harry answered quickly, grabbing her to turn her around again and face him. "He's just regenerated. He's confused, that's all."

"But they—My grandad—" her eyes were filling with tears. She was scared. Just scared.

He could hear the echo of boots running not far off. There were more soldiers coming. He gave her a quick hug and told her it would be okay, then pushed her off towards Shaun. His eyes turned to Ganbri, feeling something rotten rolling around inside him at the way those brown eyes looked at him so nervously.

"What did you mean 'who'?" he asked quietly.

"Nothing," Ganbri answered quickly—too quickly. "I'm just not thinking straight. I'm all—"

"Ganbri, don't you  _dare_  lie to me right now."

"Yes, sir," he responded instantly, turning his eyes down like a scolded little boy. "I only said 'who' because I never really hear you call him Wilfred. You just say Grandfather."

Just like his Banni—never the whole truth.

"Have you ever even met him?"

"I . . ." Ganbri's eyes took on the same burdened look that the Doctor's did sometimes. "I've seen pictures of him. But they're all from before I was born. I didn't think he was still—"

Another chunk of debris hit the side of the ship and everybody swayed and staggered with the movement. The soldiers that he had heard coming appeared, flying in from one the hallway entrances. There was a spatter of gunfire but none of them stopped to actually fight. They ran past and down another hall as quickly as their legs would take them, none of them looking back.

Harry looked down the darkened hall that they had emerged from and swore he could hear that terrible snarling in his head again. The Doctor and Kahlia were down there somewhere. So were Wilfred and the baby. All of them were in danger. All of them needed him.

How was he supposed to choose?


	86. Kahlia

Somehow, within minutes, Kahlia had completely lost control of her army.

The Ginu'un fleet had been devastating to the ship, destroying the engines and leaving her stranded, before their men even began to board and fight on foot. The Haephsian army was clearly not made of warriors but they were incredibly strong and their lack of experience made them completely unpredictable.

She had decided to stay hidden in her black room, controlling her men from safety, but that plan was quickly falling apart. Whatever the Doctor had unleashed upon her ship was refusing to fall, no matter how many bullets her men poured into it. She tried to get a proper look at it, to identify it, but whenever she tried to see through a man's eyes, she barely caught a glimpse before it turned on the man and everything went black.

It was like it could smell her.

She could hear it in her head, even now. Every time she tried to see it, the sound grew louder. A constant, blood curdling growl that vibrated through every bone. She could almost feel its hot breath on her neck, almost smell the stench of death emerging from its gaping mouth. It was hungry. So hungry.

"My Lady," a voice ripped through her thought process and she looked up to see an unfamiliar woman peeking in from the door. "My Lady, please—"

"What is it?" Kahlia snapped.

"It's getting close," the woman said timidly. "My Lady, he's coming."

"Run then!"

The woman fled without a second thought. They all fled. Cowards. Fools. If they only understood how important this challenge was, not one of them would turn away. They simply didn't know. They didn't understand the designs the universe had put it place.

She supposed their cowardice was part of that design though. One more obstacle she must overcome. She would prove her worth to the Vortex. She would earn her place.

The ship rocked as several decks were jettisoned into space, just as the Doctor promised. Her ship no longer had any way to move and no way to resupply or equip her soldiers. She tried to calm herself as she clambered back to her feet—it was just a test. It was all just a test. She was meant to do this and the universe had provided a way for her to succeed. She just had to find it.

A series of booms echoed through the walls and the ship rocked again, more violently than before. She lost her balance and stumbled along with the movement, trying to stay upright. Her ankle twisted in a very painful way and she fell, her elbow striking the floor hard when she landed. She didn't try to get up again as long as the ship was still moving.

When she did finally get back on her feet, her ankle throbbed with pain. It hurt to put any weight on it and she knew immediately that it would be a problem if she needed to move quickly. No matter though. She didn't intend to run. She did not  _need_  to run. She could pass her test from her room with nothing more than her mind.

Kahlia decided that the soldiers were too weak and too afraid. Maybe she could find the Doctor's mind and see it through him. She reached out into the darkness, swimming through a sea of fear and the whisperings of a hundred men's dying thoughts.

She might not have recognized the Doctor's consciousness had it not been so eerily calm compared to those around him. She didn't need to connect with his mind to feel how different it was. This was not the man she knew. This man was cold and merciless. There was no fear in him. There wasn't even anger.

It was worse than that.

She tried to see into his mind anyway, despite how alien it felt. There was no resistance upon entry and that should have been her first warning. Once she was there, she was suddenly blind. She didn't see through his eyes as she was trying to. She didn't hear his thoughts drifting about. For a moment she thought she hadn't gone anywhere at all and she was still just sitting in her black room.

_I was hoping you would come to see me before this ended._

Suddenly she felt disconnected from her physical body, like someone had severed the line leading back. There was nothing there—only the darkness, only numbness. Nothing, except the sound of the Doctor's voice.

"What have you done?" she asked the darkness, desperately reaching out for her own body again. Where had it gone? How could she have possibly lost it? The Doctor was a poor excuse for a telepath; he wasn't capable of _this_.

 _I didn't do anything,_  the voice answered.  _You came here on your own._

"Let me out!" she shouted angrily, trying to force her way past the black walls.

 _Not just yet_.

His voice was calm, almost playful. He was  _toying_  with her. The emotion she sensed from the Doctor was worse than anything she imagined, and far worse than what she hoped for. No anger, no fear, no hesitation, or remorse. He felt . . .

Satisfied.

_I told you I would come for you._

"I didn't think you had it in you."

_For the record, I promised to ask if you would like a truce._

He meant to kill her. He had some  _thing_  that he had unleashed to hunt her down and tear her apart like a piece of meat and now she was injured. She couldn't outrun that thing. She couldn't physically fight it. She was trapped.

But that was the idea, wasn't it? The point to it all was to use her mind. This was perfect. This was the plan of the Vortex. Her body was irrelevant in this situation. It was her mind that would save her. It was her mind that would bring her success.

"I accept," she said quickly, being sure to be loud and clear. "I don't want to fight you anymore, Doctor. I want the war to end. I want us to be at peace."

There was a short pause and for a moment she thought she had done it. The Doctor and his moral code would be his downfall once more. She could call for peace and he would be forced to accept. All she would have to do was wait for the perfect time to strike again.

 _I've gotten quite good at this, you know,_  the voice answered slowly, amused.  _I cut the Beast off completely from everything. It's trapped in my mind, just like you. I control its body without it even knowing . . . but that was the easy part. The hard part was keeping it out of_ ** _my_** _head. I see a window. It sees a mirror._

She didn't like the sound of his voice. She didn't like that he hadn't responded to the acceptance of a truce. She didn't like that she didn't know what was happening in the real world.

"I said I accept your truce," she repeated anxiously. "You promised, remember?"

_I promised I would ask._

No. No, he wouldn't. The Doctor just didn't  _do_  that sort of thing.

She needed out. She needed out of his mind now. She pushed with all her might and thought she felt something weaken. But the fear was growing in her, and she felt something looking at her through the dark. She panicked, fighting to escape, and suddenly the fear grew uncontrollably.

She felt those hungry eyes growing eager, could practically hear saliva dripping off long and vicious fangs. What was it?  _Where_  was it?

 _I can see your thoughts, Kahlia,_  the Doctor explained quietly, though there was another sound now.  _Even if you can't see my mine._

"I accepted!" she insisted. "I want a truce!"

She could hear it, growing louder, getting closer. A snarl that bit down into her bones. A growl that set every cell of her being shaking and begging to run. It was filling her ears, painfully loud, and her hearts began to beat wildly in her chest. It was coming for her. It was out there, somewhere, and it was coming.

"Peace!" she cried, certain she could feel the Beast's body heat radiating against her own. "Stop it, I want peace!"

_Don't lie to me, little girl._

It was coming. It was there! Her body was helpless and detached and that thing was in her head. It would cut her open, or eat her, or gods knew what it was that it did to its victims. Her mission would end in the teeth of some hell-spawned demon and the Doctor was simply going to watch.

She needed to run.

"Stop it!" she shouted, trying to force the terrible sound out of her head. "Stop it, Doctor! Please!"

Instantaneously, the noise stopped. She stood, dazed and confused in the darkness. But she could still feel the Doctor. She still felt him watching her with those eyes that had seen countless deaths. She felt his joy.

 _You said please,_  the voice whispered excitedly.  _Good girl._

She was launched back into her body so violently that she felt sick. Somehow, she had left her black room and stood out in the shadowy hall. How had she come to be there? She tried to open the door to get back inside and found it locked, the control panel beside the door destroyed.

When she looked down at her hands, she found one of them was bleeding, with a piece of the control panel lodged in her knuckle. This was a form of telepathy no one had ever tried on her, not even father. She knew that the Doctor still was unlikely to be stronger than her, but she simply didn't know how to fight that sort of attack.

Her soldiers were gone. They were supposed to be guarding her and they had all left! There were no corpses littering the floor here—they had not fought and died in her defense. But then, she supposed, if the Doctor had made her lock herself out of own sanctuary, what else did he make her do?

She heard the gunfire first and her eyes shot towards the darkness that the sound came from. The emergency power offered just enough light to let her see down the hallway and know that he had not arrived yet. One of the intersections was lighting up periodically with the gunfire and she could already hear the men screaming.

It was getting closer.

She started to hear it again—the snarling. That terrible growl getting louder, closer. She took a step forward and felt pain shoot up her leg. She could move but it would be slow. Where could she go that would offer her safety and was close enough to get to quickly?

 _Move_ , she thought. _Move and find out where you're going when you get there._

She hurried as quickly as she could, hopping awkwardly on one leg down the hallway and hoping that the universe would show her what to do next. She dared to glance over her shoulder at that corner that kept lighting up, just in time to see the shredded rags of what was once a person being tossed out into the hall.

The snarling was so loud now that she almost didn't hear the scuffle of feet. Soldiers? Men coming to her aid? She hurried forward the last few feet to the next intersection and glanced down to the source of the noise.

There was another hallway running parallel to the was in and joined by the hall she was looking down. She saw Haephsian priests and Ginu'un foot soldiers running towards the direction of the Doctor and his monster. Idiots would get themselves killed.

But then she saw faces she recognized—Brody and the Mechanic. Captain Jack Harkness, Donna Noble and her husband. She recognized the Prowler only because she could read his signature as a Time Lord now and it made the anger bubble inside her.

They raced past without even seeing her. That was, until Father.

He must have sensed her somehow. He stopped dead in his tracks and looked straight at her. This was her chance, she knew. This was what the universe had given her to escape with. Father would save her. Father would always save her. He hated her, yes, but he could never seem to rid himself of the part that loved her too.

She stepped towards him, allowing him to see her cringe in pain and favour her good leg. Blood would work better. Was she bleeding anywhere? Oh, yes, her hand. She raised her hand out toward him, delighted with the way a couple of droplets of blood fell from her fingertips and splashed on the floor. Father couldn't ignore his wounded little girl.

He stared at her anxiously, eagerly, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. His eyes turned to look down the hall where the others had gone and then back at her, back and forth several times within seconds.

He wouldn't let the Doctor and his monster get to her. He would not abandon her here. Father would save her, certainly.

His eyes turned to her once more, his lips parted to say something. She didn't hear what he whispered to her over the sound of the monster's famished snarling in her head, but the movement of his lips looked suspiciously like 'sorry'.

And then he was gone.

Just like that, she was staring down an empty hallway. Empty, dark, with nothing but the monster's growling around her. But he wouldn't leave her. No. He simply couldn't! That was not the role that the universe had assigned to him this day. It was not the destiny written for her that she should die here, alone and abandoned.

This was  _not_  what was meant to happen.

She turned back and looked down the hall she had come from. The gunfire had stopped. So had the screaming.

She saw the great Beast's fleshless snout and dripping teeth appear first around the corner. She didn't see a single muscle twitching to produce that horrific sound, but she heard it all the same. It stepped out into clear view, its skin a dull and lifeless black, body heaving as it anticipated its next kill.

The Doctor stepped out beside it, glancing down and straightening his blood splattered suit jacket. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and casually wiped his nose while the Beast stared blindly at the wall before it. He patted its side casually as he tucked the cloth away again, stopping to pick a soggy chunk of meat off his tie like it was a piece of food and flick it away. They looked perfectly calm and yet the sound in her head was so loud now that it hurt, and she had to fight the urge to fall to her knees.

Then the Doctor raised his eyes. The Beast's head moved in unison with the Time Lord's, turning to the left and staring down the darkened hallway straight at her. A frightened whimper escaped without her permission and she quickly covered her mouth with her hand.

The Doctor smiled so warmly at her that she remembered the day he came down to his knees for her and kissed her on the cheek. "Hello, Kahlia."

The Beast opened its wide jaws and roared so loudly that the ground shook, revealing a mouth full of teeth that had already claimed many lives that day. Its skin turned instantly from its lifeless black to a bright and vibrant blue with a chocolate underbelly. A mane opened up around its neck like some bizarre umbrella and revealed a red so deep that Kahlia wasn't sure if it was the Beast's skin or the remains of its last victims.

The sound filled her with such fear that, for a second, she was completely paralyzed. The Doctor took a step towards her, still smiling so beautifully, and he said his next word in a wonderfully soft voice.

"Run."

She did.


	87. Wilfred

Ganbri had started crying again almost the moment the Doctor left. Wilfred had hurried back into the depths of the TARDIS, hoping to keep the baby from hearing the terrible sounds that were coming from outside, but it did little to help.

He had taken Ganbri to his nursery, the one Donna had worked so hard to put together, and tried to keep him calm. He poked at a few of the odd gadgets the Doctor had placed in there to see if any of them did anything useful. Some strange silver ball had begun to play music that sounded oddly familiar and when he touched an ornament that looked like it was supposed to be a solar system it filled most of the room with holographic images of space.

Ganbri still cried. And, when something shook the entire TARDIS, he thought the little baby was going to knock himself out he turned so red in the face.

Wilfred supposed it only made sense for a baby to cry when he was without either of his fathers for the first time in his life. Still, he wished he knew a bit more about Time Lord babies in case there was something he was doing wrong.

How strong was telepathy in Time Lords at birth? He'd never thought to ask that. He quickly tried to banish all thoughts as to what was happening outside. He refused to think about the fury in the Doctor's eyes or the fear in Harry's. He wouldn't think any more about that Beast or the sight of Ganbri as an adult, soaked in blood.

"Your daddies are coming back soon, little one," he whispered, trying to keep his mind on happy thoughts. "And the places they will take you, oh . . . it'll be wonderful. Maybe we'll all take you to Disneyplanet when you're older, eh?"

It made him smile to remember that place. That day he got his little Donna back to her old self, joyful and full of purpose. He'd never seen the Doctor quite so happy as he had been under the light of the fireworks, or Harry so at peace. They all changed that day. For that one night, all the bad things seemed to go away, and the world was okay.

It was just when he was thinking of what it was like to dance with each of the kids that he realized Ganbri's crying had been reduced to tearful whimpering. He smiled, proud of himself for being clever enough to have worked it out. The Doctor would be grinning at him and saying something lovely right now if he had been there to see it. Harry would just smile and say he wasn't surprised.

The TARDIS made an odd humming sound that caught Wilfred's attention, but it didn't sound like a warning or anything negative. Could the Doctor be back already? Was the deed already done?

Wilf held Ganbri close against his chest, shushing the whimpering child as he cautiously stepped out through the nursery door and glanced down at the white eggshell that led to the rest of the TARDIS. He could hear footsteps— _running_  footsteps.

"Grandfather!" he heard a familiar voice calling.

"Harry?"

Had he really managed to get back so quickly? Wilfred hurried down the hallway and the white door slid out of the way. When he stepped out he saw, not only Harry, but Donna, Shaun, Jack, and two others that he didn't know running towards him.

"Is it over?" he asked. "Where's the Do—"

Harry flung his arms around him so suddenly and so tightly that it knocked the breath out of him too much to get the last word out. "You're okay," Harry was panting hard, clearly having run quite far, and Ganbri kicked his feet against the sudden and unwanted pressure. Without another word, Harry scooped the baby from his arms and clung to him like he would never let go of that child again.

"What in the world has happened?" Wilfred asked in surprise as Donna came up to him next, face full of exhaustion, and hugged him just as tightly. "My goodness, Shaun!"

Everyone in the group had some blood on them, but the man was simply _covered_ —splattered all over him as if a person had popped like a water balloon in front of him. Shaun only shrugged. There was a very short man with very big teeth that had an impressive amount on him too, giving Wilfred the chills as most of it was on his hands or around his mouth. Then he spotted the other young man with his shirt soaked through and a sizable hole in the fabric over his chest. Did he ever look like the Doctor now . . .

"Jesus, is that seriously Ganbri?" the very short man blurted suddenly, leaning in very close to the baby in Harry's arms. "If I bite him will the real him suddenly have a scar?"

"I will turn you into a rug," Harry growled in return and quickly moved so that the baby was well away from those gleaming teeth.

The little man didn't seem bothered in the slightest, turning to playfully punch the adult Ganbri in the shoulder. "Look how fucking cute you are."

Wilfred couldn't help but notice the way Ganbri stared at him as Jack quickly briefed them all on the current situation. Apparently, things had been happening so fast that hardly anyone knew what was going on anymore. Wilfred definitely knew the feeling.

But why did Ganbri keep staring at him?

Jack had barely finished explaining who Nista and Ganbri were when Donna suddenly smacked Ganbri aggressively in the chest. "What the  _hell_  are you doing here?" she roared at him. "Do you have  _any_  idea what me and your dad had to do to make sure you born safely in all this mess? And then you come  _back_? You should be at home cleaning your room or something!"

"I'm twenty-seven . . ."

"Button it!" she barked, smacking him again.

"Donna, take him," Harry said quickly, pushing the baby into Donna's arms. "Do  _not_  let Nista touch him."

"I'm not going to actually bite him!"

"Ganbri," Harry took the boy by the arm and moved him away from the center of the crowd. Jack was talking about what they should be doing next but Wilf couldn't pay attention. His ears were automatically seeking out Harry's words, listening carefully and noticing the worrisome way the two Time Lords kept glancing over at him.

"Did anything change?" he heard Harry whisper urgently. "Did you feel anything change? Your memories?  _Anything_?"

Ganbri had barely begun to shake his head when Harry's entire body visibly tensed. His dark eyes turned down the hallway towards the console room as though he were responding to some distant sound. Ganbri's eyes followed just a moment later.

"Jenny," Ganbri said.

"She's here?"

"Well, things didn't go according to plan. She probably decided to regroup and figure something out. It only makes sense to look for us here."

"Who's Jenny?" Jack blurted.

Wilfred saw a change that no one else seemed to notice as they busied themselves with pestering Ganbri with questions about Jenny. Harry's eyes were wide, glancing around the hall and gazing upwards. He had new information and, while everyone was busy bickering or fussing over something, Harry was planning.

And, though it didn't make much sense to him, Wilfred heard the game changing words stumble forth from Ganbri's mouth.  _She's his daughter._

"Jack!"

Both Nista and Captain Jack answered at the same time, though, while Jack answered with a simple "Yeah?", Nista suddenly stood very straight and practically barked "Yes, sir."

Harry was suddenly full of energy, almost excited, as he spoke to Jack in words so hurried they were barely understandable. "Everyone's here. Everyone's safe. Keep them that way, no matter what it takes," he paused for a brief second to glance at Nista's very rigid posture and determined face. "Nista, you help him."

"Yes, sir!" both men answered, though one perhaps less seriously than the other.

Harry only exchanged a look with Ganbri before the youth turned his eyes to the floor—defeated or obedient, Wilfred couldn't decide.

"I am taking Boris and Jenny," Harry announced loudly to the whole group. "The three of us are going to fetch the Doctor and then we are  _all_  getting out of here.  _No one_  else is to leave the TARDIS. Am I understood?"

"Yes, sir," Jack, Nista, and Ganbri answered together. Shaun repeated the phrase a second later, while Donna only shifted her weight and muttered something about them all being mad. No one said a damn thing as Harry turned to run back to the control room.

No one questioned him. No one asked why he needed Boris. No one asked why he needed Jenny. No one asked what he planned to do about Kahlia. They all saw a man covered in the blood of the fallen and saw a mighty Time Lord—the great and powerful Master. Wilfred just saw Harry.

Frightened, tired, moments-away-from-an-attack Harry. He saw the boy that he'd cared for when he was sick, that he'd helped into bed a hundred times, that he'd watched fall in love like a twitterpated teenager.

He saw the Doctor the same way, even with his fearsome Beast. He saw past the Oncoming Storm, to the calm, every day blue skies on the other side. Just like the first day Wilfred had joined them in the TARDIS, neither the Doctor nor Harry were themselves. They had reverted back to children—terribly frightened children—that were lashing out in whichever way they thought might keep them safe.

No one else saw it. No one thought to question. They saw a strong and capable man and believed that he would do what was best. But Wilfred knew his boys better than that. They got lost in their anger sometimes. They acted drastically in their fear. They made mistakes—terrible, irreparable mistakes. They needed someone to tell them when it had gone too far, someone to stop them and remind them of what was important before they hurt each other. They needed their Grandfather.

Donna had the baby now. There was someone to hold him and look after him and keep him calm as the storm raged outside. They would be okay without him now.

"I'm sorry," Wilf said suddenly. "But I've been breaking up fights between those two for over a year now and I know what they're like. I've got to go."

Jack actually grabbed him by the arm to stop him. "Harry said no one leaves."

"Good job he's not my boss then, isn't it?" Wilf answered quickly, pulling himself out of Jack's grip. "I'm a free man and I'll do what I like, thank you."

"I can't let you go, Wilfred."

"What are you gonna do then, eh? Shoot me?"

He didn't wait for an answer. He turned and walked down the hall, following Harry's footsteps, terribly aware of the way Ganbri stared at him without saying a word. Like his fathers, the boy's eyes said more than his mouth ever did, and Wilfred saw surprise in them the minute they saw each other. Ganbri didn't know him and certainly didn't expect to see him.

Now he saw sadness. Not fear. Ganbri wasn't afraid of what  _might_  happen. He was sad about what  _would_  happen. He looked into those dark and burdened eyes and saw his own destiny.

He ignored Jack and Donna's protests and paused just long enough to whisper in the boy's ear. "Are they happy?"

Ganbri nodded hesitantly.

"Then it's okay."

He went to walk away, but Ganbri laid a hand on his arm to stop him a moment longer. "I heard all sorts of stories about you, growing up," he whispered somewhat shakily. "You saved them, they always told me. You saved them both . . . in every way there is."

He smiled, patted the boy on the shoulder, and began walking again.

"Grandad, where are you going!?" Donna shouted at him, causing the baby to give a startled cry.

"I'll be back soon, sweetheart," he answered quickly, quickening his pace as he hurried toward the console room. "Take care of the baby. And, Shaun, you take care of her."

"But! What are—what's . . ."

He glanced back to see what had caught her attention but made sure to keep walking. Ganbri had turned to watch him go, standing rigidly with his shoulders squared and his hand against his forehead in salute. Nista was doing the same. Then, as they realized that Ganbri and Nista were aware of all their futures, Shaun and Jack solemnly followed their examples.

Donna looked around at them and her eyes were quickly tearing up. "Come back!"

"Love you, darling," he answered as casually as though he were just popping out for a pint. "Ta."

She would be okay. They would all be just fine.

As long as he made sure they were all together.


	88. Kahlia

If she hadn't turned the corner at to see her father, Kahlia never would have spotted the service hatch in the wall, and the Beast would have had her within seconds. The thing was enormous but incredibly agile. She had been only a few feet from the hatch when she turned to run and yet the monster had lunged forward, covered the distance, turned the corner without even slowing down, and reached her by the time she had pulled herself through the tiny door.

Its mass slammed the hatch shut against her already wounded ankle. Its teeth were so sharp that it took her a second to realize that they had sunk into her foot. It was pulling at her so viciously that she could feel the flesh tearing, but it couldn't pull her back out because it kept foolishly slamming against the door. Her helpless screaming only encouraged it. She felt the bones in her foot and ankle breaking as the door repeatedly crushed them but at least it kept the rest of her from the monster's jaws.

She had several knives, but she would have to put her hand through the open door to wound the Beast and she couldn't risk it getting a hold of her arm. All she could think to do was hurt the Doctor.

It was next to impossible to concentrate and she knew she would never have been able to breach his mind if he wasn't working so hard at controlling the Beast but, somehow, she did it. With a surge of effort, she broke through to his mind. She was only able to hold the concentration for a second, but his mind was greatly weakened and it was enough.

She heard him let out a muffled cry of pain and the Beast suddenly let go with an odd sounding whimper. She pulled her butchered foot in through the small service door and yanked it shut before the Doctor regained control.

The hatch was meant to be crawled through and, even with her very small size, was difficult to move through with any decent speed. The foot that the Beast had grabbed hold of was practically useless now. She couldn't even make it move so she assumed that the nerves had been damaged or severed. She had to use her elbows and her good leg to drag herself through the tiny area, moving as quickly as she could in case the Doctor himself simply opened the door and dragged her out.

A sound she never thought to hear from her own mouth escaped when the Beast's savage claws tore through screaming metal and left a hole where the hatch door had been. She struggled desperately to move away but her actions only seemed to feed the monster's frenzy. It ripped at the metal, making the opening bigger by the second. It could fit its entire head in now, snapping perilously close to her feet.

 _Move_ , she told herself. _Stop looking at it and just_   _ **move**_.

The service hatches usually connected to each other, she remembered, and they were all capable of sealing off as soon as the tunnel passed into another deck. If she could make it to the next deck, she could seal it off, preventing the monster from following her, and command the ship to jettison the deck she had just left.

She could launch the Doctor and his nightmarish creature into space. He would either have to run back to his TARDIS or die in the cold vacuum once the seals failed. Either way, it would buy her time. She could heal and come back to this battle another day.

 _Quickly now. Quickly._ She moved as fast as her mangled leg would allow her, away from the Beast's dripping teeth. It roared and thrashed and tore apart the metal tunnel, whilst the Doctor stood there and watched. Waiting.

Despite her injuries, she was moving faster than the Beast could keep up with. It was gradually falling behind as she got closer to her salvation. The Beast howled with fury at its loss and she couldn't help but smile a little in satisfaction.

Then suddenly, with a great huff of frustration, the Beast withdrew from the devastated tunnel entrance and vanished. She froze for a second, terrified. Where had it gone? What was it doing?

No matter, she decided. It was too big for the tunnel. It couldn't reach her and, the longer she sat there in fear, the longer the Doctor had to come up with another plan. Keep moving. The smartest thing she could do was to keep moving towards the next deck, seal it off, and send the Doctor back to his beloved stars.

 _Where are you going?_  She heard the Doctor's voice whispering in her head. She chose to ignore it.

_Come back, Kahlia. Come back here._

She focused on her task instead, refusing to acknowledge the voice. He was only trying to slow her down while his monster undoubtedly salivated and paced. Just keep moving. Keep moving and live.

Suddenly her hands landed in something wet and slipped as she crawled through the metal shaft. She looked down and realized that the metal was simply coated in hot, thick blood. All over her hands, her clothes, she could even taste it in her mouth.

That hadn't been there a moment ago. No, it was impossible. She looked further down the shaft, where she was heading, and saw a body lying there. The blood was flowing towards her from the open throat of a young man with brown hair. Mouse, the guards had called him. She made the Doctor watch while she killed him. It was only then that she remembered she had forced the Doctor's son to watch as well.

"Get out," she bellowed angrily. "Get out of my head!"

She telepathically shoved at the unwelcome presence in her mind and the Doctor withdrew as silent and stealthily as he had invaded. The blood and the body vanished, but she still had a taste of sickness in the back of her throat at the thought of it. The Doctor was trying to frighten her again, but she would not fall victim to such juvenile tactics. She moved on.

When she reached the place where she had seen the body, it suddenly appeared again. This time, however, Mouse's cold and bloodied hands shot out towards her, gripping her firmly by the throat. It felt real—as real as the bruises on her neck from when the Doctor grabbed her that way. She coughed and sputtered for breath and Mouse's blue eyes glared at her, the rage pouring through them despite the way they were glazed over with death.

"Stop it!"

Mouse vanished again, leaving behind only the snarling of the Beast in her head. She pressed forward again. Not much farther to go.

And where was Father? Why had he not saved her? Why had he abandoned her there to die? How could he sit somewhere in safety with his patchwork family when his own flesh and blood was in peril? Why was he not there to fight away the monsters and the nightmares?

She concentrated on keeping the Doctor out through the last few minutes of her journey. She felt his presence prowling around her mind a few times, snarling and pacing with hackles raised, but he never made it through.

It was with a sense of great triumph that she opened the hatch door and looked out at a different deck of the ship. The Doctor and his Beast would still be fussing at the other end of it, trying to find a way to get her, while she secured her own safety.

It was a long and painful task to hobble on one foot across the large, open room she had emerged into. There was a control console on the far wall that she could use to jettison the deck the Doctor was on, as long as she bit through the pain and made it there.

Her hearts fluttered fantastically as she laid her pale fingers on the controls and deftly worked them. She had all but written this whole mess off as over in her head when the screen lit up with red letters.

ERROR. DISPOSAL UNAVAILABLE.

She tried again, only to get the same message. She felt the anger rising in her at the thought that she had to troubleshoot the damn computer system in a life and death situation. Though that anger quickly gave way to dread when the computer explained exactly  _why_  it was refusing to let her jettison the decks. There it was, flashing in red as it counted down.

DETACHMENT IN 0:17.

She realized, with that sick feeling rising in her throat again, that the Doctor had pushed her to this deck by trying to frighten her away from it. It was about to detach from the rest of the ship, leaving her nowhere else to run—nowhere to hide from him.

She knew he would be there before she even turned around. That great Beast of his was standing in front of the hatch that she had crawled out of, blocking the way, snarling at her and flexing its mane. The Doctor simply looked at her with cold, staring eyes.

There was an escape pod somewhere on this deck, she knew, but how would she get there before the Beast tore her to pieces?

"You're going to watch, are you?" she spat angrily at him.

"Yes."

"Because you like to watch monsters eat little girls?"

His face didn't change in the slightest. "Because I need to make sure you actually die this time."

The floor moved quite suddenly as the deck detached and she was unable to keep her balance on one leg alone. While the Doctor merely swayed with the movement, Kahlia fell rather ungracefully to the floor. She'd lost so much blood already that it was a miracle she was still conscious, she realized as she looked at the trail she'd left behind. Even if the monster didn't kill her, she'd die on her own anyway. She needed help.

"You're a doctor," she said desperately, gesturing at the ruined remains of her leg. "Doctors aren't supposed to let people die."

"I'm  _the_  Doctor," he corrected quickly. "And I'm afraid I let people die very often."

He couldn't. He wouldn't really. Not the man that her father had told her about. The Doctor was wonderful, Father had always said. He was fair and kind and merciful to the point of being stupid. She felt tears welling in her eyes and her throat drying out. Father had left her to die at the hands of this madman.

The Beast took a step towards her and she let out a hysterical scream, hot tears suddenly rushing down her face. "You can't!" she shouted, her voice high and cracking as a flood of emotion suddenly poured out of her. "If you love him—if you  _love_  him, you won't do this!"

"It is because I love him that I must," the Doctor answered quietly.

"He'll never forgive you for it," she spat venomously.

"No, I don't suppose he ever will," the Doctor said, with an oddly sad smile appearing on his lips. "But I don't need him to forgive me. I need him to stay alive. I need him to raise our son. I need him to sleep at night without the fear of you poisoning his dreams."

"He can," she answered quickly. "He will! I'll leave him be. I'll leave you all to live your lives. You can tell him I died, and I'll disappear."

She tried to keep the walls firm around her mind, to keep him out. She didn't want him to see through her words and fought against the presence pushing forward on her mind. She prayed that he would agree to let her go. Let him believe whatever he needed to believe and let her go. As the tears streamed down her face, she silently begged the universe to save her from him and promised that she would not forsake her destiny.

"Please," she whispered.

His eyes narrowed at her and she knew it was too late. "No."

The Beast lunged forward with a terrible roar. She screamed wildly and her arms flung up to protect her face, cowering against the floor. But nothing touched her.

She heard the Beast's growls quickly turn to barks and yelps of anger and nothing so much as brushed against her. She opened her eyes to look and saw the monster's flesh disappearing before her very eyes as wisps of shadow passed over it. Its legs gave out and it tumbled to the floor with a terrible amount of noise and the shadow continued to ravage its body as quickly as the new flesh grew in.

"Dad."

Kahlia saw the way the Doctor's eyes widened with fear, suddenly looking much older and weaker than he did a moment ago. Kahlia's head whipped around to look at the doorway where the sound had come from and saw a young woman standing there. A pretty, blonde girl wearing the armour of the Star and looking a little frightened herself.

"Jenny," the Doctor said breathlessly in return. A small trail of blood trickled from his nose and he quickly pulled a handkerchief from his pocket to clean it up. Controlling the Beast was taking its toll apparently.

"Let her go."

That was Father's voice! Kahlia felt the breath rush out of as she craned around to look. Father had come! There he was, standing behind that girl, covered with sweat and blood, his hands clearly trembling as they held the shotgun against the girl's spine.

"Let her go, Doctor," Father repeatedly firmly. "Or I won't be the only one to lose a daughter today."


	89. Harry

Harry had whispered to Jenny that he was sorry right before he pushed the barrel to her back, for whatever that was worth.

"Jenny never did a damn thing to you!" the Doctor roared at him. "She never did a thing to anyone!"

That was true, as far as he knew. He'd never even laid eyes on Jenny until just a few moments ago and he knew next to nothing about her as a person. She could be the sweetest woman in the world, but it didn't make any difference. She was the Doctor's daughter and that was all he cared to know about her today.

"This can be easy," Harry answered quietly, as calmly as he could. "I have your daughter. You have mine. We can all walk out of here."

Harry could see Kahlia shaking terribly on the floor. She looked dreadful and one of her legs looked like the meat was only held together by scraps. She was crying. She was trying very hard to stop now but he caught on to every sniff and burdened breath. It made him think of when she was six years old—he had her for the day but wasn't really watching her. She turned on a burner in the lab and scorched her arm. She sat perfectly still while he cared for the wound, pursing her lips together and breathing shakily as she tried so hard not to cry. She didn't even shed a tear until he began telling her off for doing something so stupid.

"I can't let her go, Harry," the Doctor answered him just as calmly. "You know that I can't. Not after what she's done."

"And what about what  _I_ did!?"

The Doctor's monster fell to the floor with a loud thud and a terrible groan. Boris had practically stripped it to the bone and yet it was still breathing. Even now, Harry could see the flesh slowly growing back but, for a moment at least, the shadow backed off and gave them some quiet.

The Doctor was glaring at him, clearly unimpressed. "What do you want me to say, Harry?" he asked with a cold edge to his voice. "Do you want me to say that I should've killed you too? Do you want me to say that I was wrong to give you so many chances?"

"I want you to say you'll give me another," he answered quickly. "Just let me help her. Let me  _try_."

The Doctor's eyes burned straight through him. He could feel the unbound fury of the other Time Lord rippling through the air, like the cracking of thunder as a storm approaches. He was not in a forgiving mood today.

"Someone should have stopped me then," his voice was cold, but his eyes were threatening to shed tears. "I wanted to help you so much that I forgot how many people suffered. I love you, Harry, and I wouldn't change what I did if it meant I would lose you again . . . but it was wrong. I was selfish and  _wrong_. If I had just . . . If I had only put my sentiment aside, how many families out there would still be whole?"

Harry didn't even want to think about that. He didn't want the Doctor's guilty conscience to be what decided his daughter's fate. He especially didn't want to think about how much better off Kahlia would have been if he really had just died and stayed that way. Kahlia might never have become the Nightmare.

"And these are the morals you want Ganbri to grow up with?" he spat back. "Hunting someone down like an animal and murdering them in cold blood is okay as long as you think something bad  _might_  happen?"

He felt the air ripple again and those brown eyes filled with fire. The Beast let out an angry growl and struggled to get back on its feet, giving Boris a challenge as he tried to keep up with the monster's regenerative abilities.

"How many soldiers did you slaughter today without a second thought?"

"That's not the same!" Harry shouted angrily. "I killed men today because I had no choice. They had guns in their hands that would have killed me, our son, and our friends if I hadn't killed them. You look at my girl and tell me she's a threat to you right now. She's unarmed and wounded. She can't even walk for fuck's sake!"

"And what will you do when she tries to kill again?" the Doctor demanded.

"I'll stop her," Harry promised in return. "Whatever it takes, I'll do what needs to be done. Just let me try, Doctor. Please."

The Doctor stared at him long and hard. The room was silent except for the Beast's groaning and Kahlia's occasional whimper.

She could be saved. He _knew_ she could. She just needed the right environment and time. If he could keep her on the TARDIS for a little while under a watchful eye, they could help her. Wilfred would talk to her and forgive her and tell her to smarten up and move on. The Doctor would teach her to see the wonder in the little things again. Ganbri would help to give her purpose and hope. It would all work, he was certain of it.

But the Doctor's eyes were hard, and his voice was grim and without apology. "I can't take that chance. Not again."

Harry couldn't believe that the only detail he really knew about Jenny was that she was a bred and born soldier yet, somehow, he had forgotten that. She was so fast that he didn't really have time to react properly. All he knew for sure was that the shotgun was aggressively ripped from his hands before Jenny drove a knee straight into his stomach.

He saw her turn swiftly on her heel to point the gun at Kahlia, but he managed to kick in the backs of her knees before she fired. The gun discharged, sending a spray of metal into the ceiling as Jenny fell, and he leapt on her to wrestle it from her grip.

Kahlia's whimpers suddenly became more urgent and he turned his head to see the Beast climbing to its feet again.

"Boris, get off it now!" he heard the Doctor roar as the massive creature fought against the devouring shadow.

The distraction cost Harry a split lip as Jenny slammed the butt of the shotgun into his face, then pain shot through his still tender chest as she shoved hard to get him off of her. She was much younger than him and her body wasn't recovering from the same kind of damage that his was. He very quickly realized that he wouldn't be able to beat her in a fight.

His mind cried out to Boris for a switch and the shadow immediately leapt away from the Beast. The shotgun was nothing but dust within seconds and the swarm gathered to create a near solid wall, trapping Jenny alone on her side of the room.

Harry rushed over to the Beast, drew the longest blade he had, and drove it straight into the monster's throat. The damn thing wouldn't stay down. It just kept growing more flesh and stubbornly  _breathing_. He did the only thing he could think to do with something he knew nothing about and dove into its mind.

It was dark and hazy, as though it were sedated somehow. The Beast was in pain and tired but there was a voice pushing it to move. While the monster wanted to sleep and recover, there was a voice that Harry knew very well insisting that it get up and fight.

Harry threw his strength at the source of that voice and heard the Doctor let out a startled cry in the physical world. There was blood rushing from the Doctor's nose and he staggered as though he'd been struck over the head, but he stubbornly tried to force his way back into the Beast's mind. Harry pushed again, and the Doctor fell to his knees. He still didn't give up and Harry hit him harder.

"Harry, stop!" he heard Jenny shouting past the furious swarm that held her back. "You're hurting him!"

Hurting him, yes. He knew that it must hurt. But all the Doctor had to do was stop and Harry wouldn't need to hurt him. Harry was the one who was trying to put a _stop_ to the fighting. It wasn't his fault if the Doctor couldn't be civil.

He felt the Doctor's mind clash violently with his own, pushing him out and earning the Doctor a moment of control over the massive Beast. Its tail flicked forward like a whip, knocking him clean off his feet and tearing the fabric of his clothing—had it been any thinner, he was sure it would have shed blood.

The Beast was back on its feet now, flesh quickly reappearing before his very eyes and filling his head with a terrible snarling. It moved towards Kahlia, simply knocking Harry aside with its clawed foot when he tried to get in the way. He felt the Doctor's determination rolling off it, masking the monster's own desire to simply rest. It would have no interest in any of them if he could simply keep the Doctor out of its head.

He called upon his centuries of discipline in the study of telepathy and broke through the Beast's mind once more. The Doctor was there, struggling through the pain to keep hold of his puppet's strings, and Harry launched into his assault.

In the Beast's mind, Harry and the Doctor were locked in a fierce battle that no one else could see. Somewhere far away, in the world of physical bodies, Jenny was shouting at him angrily while Kahlia called to him to save her. The Doctor was on his hands and knees, shouting in pain and bleeding freely, while the Beast savagely attacked Harry with claws, teeth, and tail. He felt it hit him a few times, but he'd suffered far worse than a few animal scratches before.

 _Stop,_  he heard a million tiny voices whispering to him.  _Please stop now._

Boris was getting scared. The swarm was spreading out, barely holding Jenny back while trying to subdue the Beast at the same time. He heard the particles crying out to both him and the Doctor, begging them to stop before they hurt each other. Harry paid no mind. He barely felt his own wounds and surely the Doctor would call it off if he was truly hurt. Wouldn't he?

"Boys!"

 _Grandfather_. Harry froze, momentarily terrified. Grandfather was supposed to be in the TARDIS, under the guard of Jack, Haephsian priests, and Ginu'un soldiers. Harry had made certain to leave that fragile human being behind an army of fire and thunder and someone who was literally immortal. He had been safe!

His brief moment of stunned paralysis came at a cost. It wasn't until the Beast's claws slid through his shirt as though it wasn't even there and dug deeply into his flesh that the Doctor seemed to realize what had changed. Harry fell to his knees as the Beast let out a very tired sounding groan and backed down, finally released from the Time Lord's control. He could see the Doctor on the floor, blood running down his arm as he tried to block the flow from his nose. He looked ill. All Harry could think about was how that suit would never come clean.

"Boris, get away from there," Wilfred said sternly as he strode into the room. The shadow quickly obeyed and darted away from Jenny, settling instead into a semi-form in the corner. The Beast groaned again, letting out an unhappy huff as it flopped over onto its side to sleep and heal.

"Harry's gone mad," Jenny said quickly. "He turned on us for  _her_."

"Yes, I know what he's done," Wilfred answered with a heavy sigh. Then he turned and glared at them, arms folded and looking cross as ever. "Look at the pair of you!" he cried out in exasperation. "Like a couple of wild animals. You're supposed to be adults! Let alone married. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves."

"Wilfred," the Doctor began, breathing heavily. "You don't unde—"

"Don't you try to pull any Time Lord authority on me when you've been behaving like a child," Wilf scolded, holding up his finger to keep them both silent. "I may only be human, but I can see what's right in front of my eyes just fine. And what I see are two men too frightened to think through things properly. For goodness sake, look what you've done to each other!  _This_  is how you protect one another?"

He stole another glance at the Doctor and found those brown eyes staring back at him. God, he did look sick. Harry was suddenly very aware of how much his back hurt where the Beast had clawed him and the hot streams of blood working their way down. The look on the Doctor's face told him that he had just become aware of the injury too.

"There is no easy way to deal with this," the Doctor said quietly.

"No. No, there isn't," Wilf agreed. "But that doesn't mean there isn't a right way. Killing a girl in cold blood is not the right way, Doctor, and you know it. Nor is taking an innocent girl hostage the right way either, Harry. You're both only doing these things because you're afraid and you're only afraid because of how much you love the people around you. Instead of focusing on the fear, you should be focusing on the love—on the part that  _matters_."

Harry found himself feeling uncomfortable looking Wilfred in the eye and turned his gaze elsewhere. Kahlia was lying on the floor just across the room, staring wide-eyed at Wilfred as though he had ridden in on a white horse. For that moment, at least for that one moment, she looked as though she felt safe.

"I want you to think about the chances that you gave to Harry," Wilf continued, speaking directly to the Doctor and his defiantly staring eyes. "I want you to think about how hard you tried to help him because you cared about him."

"Just because I made mistakes doesn't mean I should make them again," the Doctor growled in return, blood spluttering off his lips as he spoke.

"No, but it does mean you should be compassionate to someone else stuck in the same position," the old man responded quickly. "I know you've got hundreds of years of habit to break, but you really must get used to the idea that you're not working against each other anymore! You're  _partners_. You work together. You help and support each other. You don't lock each other out of the TARDIS or take daughters as hostages!"

Suddenly, Harry felt much better. Grandfather would sort it out. He would know what to do—what was  _right_. He looked across the room at his daughter's eyes and let his thoughts drift over to her. They would be okay. Grandfather was the person who made him better and brought him and the Doctor together. He forgave and mended and cared. Grandfather would help her the way that he helped him, and they would all be okay.

And she smiled. It had been a long time since Harry had seen his daughter smile.

"Now this is what we're going to do. We're going to give Kahlia a choice," Wilfred quickly turned around to face Kahlia and added loudly. "One  _last_  chance."

Jenny stepped forward, looking like she'd just been slapped in the face. "You can't be serious. You're not really going t—"

"Be quiet, Jenny," the Doctor interrupted, though there was a definite edge to his voice. "There is another control station in the other room. I want you to go to it and try to get a signal from the TARDIS. Let them know where we are and that we're okay."

She opened her mouth once or twice more but said nothing in the end. As Jenny reluctantly left the room, the Doctor's face settled into a grim and defeated look. He wasn't happy about this situation at all and Harry knew without wondering that he didn't agree in the slightest with what Wilfred was saying, but what choice did they have now? Wilfred was right, without a doubt, that they weren't being sensible. They'd already proven that they couldn't trust themselves to do what was right.

"Thank you, Doctor. Now, Kahlia . . ." Wilfred was facing Kahlia now, her eyes wide and eager as he spoke. "If you choose to come with us, we will see to your injuries and you will be held under whatever rules that we, as a group, decide necessary. If it is decided that you must be taken to stand trial, then that is what we'll do. If it is decided that it would be more beneficial to keep you with us, then we'll do that instead. You will co-operate fully with any and all terms given to you or else there will be consequences," Wilfred took a deep breath, rubbing his temples with his fingertips as he uttered the rest of his instructions. "No one will harm you simply because they have the opportunity. However, we  _will_  defend ourselves and others if necessary. We won't let anyone else suffer for your sake. If you die while in our care, it will be entirely your decision. Is that understood?"

Harry didn't realize that he was holding his breath until Kahlia nodded her head timidly. When Wilfred turned to look at the other two men in the room, Harry agreed quickly while the Doctor glared somberly at the floor and gave one, single nod.

"Good," Wilfred rubbed his hands together in satisfaction and turned to Kahlia once more. "So then, time to make your decision. Are you coming with us?"

"Yes," Kahlia's voice whispered shakily, her face lit up in what looked like pure and simple joy. "Yes, please."

"Well, right-o then," Wilf said cheerfully, suddenly losing all the seriousness in his voice and sounding as though they had simply agreed where to go for lunch. "There we are, all sorted. Let's go home and have a cuppa, eh?"

It had always amazed Harry, more now than ever, how very simple the world was through Wilfred's eyes. Whatever someone did in the past was nothing more than interesting facts. Everyone had good in them, but some people just needed a little help getting it out. And nothing was so terrible or stressful that a cup of tea wouldn't help. Wilfred was just a simple and humble human man and, yet, he stood with the Master, the Doctor, and the Nightmare at his feet, listening to his every word.

Harry was quick to accept the hand that Wilfred offered him and pulled himself to his feet. He whispered a word of thanks, to which Wilfred simply smiled. The Beast beside him didn't seem to mind and kept sleeping when he leaned against it. He felt tiny wisps of Boris gliding over his skin, cleaning out the wounds in his back.

He watched as Wilfred helped the Doctor to his feet as well. The Time Lord's face was pale and still set in that grim expression as he took a little longer than usual to gain his balance. He stumbled a little and would have fallen if Wilfred had not had a firm hold on him. It was clear as the Doctor tried again to wipe the blood off his face that he would take a few days to recover from the strain that controlling the Beast had caused. As the monster let out a long, exhausted sigh, the Doctor patted its side like it was an old dog. He kept his eyes trained on its healing black skin instead of looking at anyone in the room.

Finally, Wilfred turned to Kahlia. She looked so pitiful, sitting there. She had scrapes all over her arms, her hair was a mess, and her white dress was filthy and blood stained. One of her feet was barely recognizable, sitting lifelessly beside her in a pool of blood. Harry never trained in the medical field, but he could tell, looking at it, that she'd be lucky to regain any function in that foot if she kept it at all.

Harry stepped towards his daughter, looking down at her frail body and delicate face. No matter how old she got or what she did, he'd never been able to see her as anything more than a child. Even when she fought beside him on the battlefield, or even against him for that matter, she was only a little girl trying to prove that she could be like her father.

That would have been a good thing if he had been a man worth imitating.

"Let me do it, Harry," Wilfred said, stepping in front of him. "You just worry about yourself right now."

Harry obeyed without hesitation. He didn't know how deep the cuts in his back were, but they were painful enough that he knew trying to lift a person, even someone as small as Kahlia, would not be pleasant.

Time seemed to slow in those moments. All the chaotic sound seemed to have disappeared into nothing but a quiet chorus of breath. Wilfred's shoe landing on the floor as he stepped forward seemed to echo through a world of silence, the soft groan of an old man bending to his knee, the rustle of clothing as he extended his arms. Kahlia raised her arms just as she used to when she was no taller than Harry's hip, smiling up at him and asking to be carried. Why had the face of his own child not enchanted him then the way it did now? Why did he not realize how much she needed him to love her?

She was the spitting image of her mother—every bit as beautiful. Her pearly skin rippled in the light as Wilfred slid an arm beneath her knees and her steel grey eyes locked with Harry's. Her black lips pulled into a smile as she looked at him and, though he felt joy coursing through him freely and he knew he was smiling back, somehow it hurt.

He remembered the way she smiled when she was so very young that she had to reach up just to hold his hand. When she was happy and when she thought she had pleased her father, her eyes would grow wide and her lips would part to show an ecstatic grin. When she learned something new or did something clever, there would be a quiet satisfaction on her face and her lips would curl into a soft smile. Just the way she was smiling now.

Harry felt a heavy stone fall on his stomach as Wilfred lifted the wounded girl off the floor. He remembered the guilty look on Ganbri's face—it had been all he needed to see to know that his Grandfather was not safe. And the pleased look on Kahlia's face now was all he needed to see to confirm it.

Kahlia kept smiling at him, her arms wrapped around Wilfred's neck so that her left hand could reach down her right sleeve without anyone noticing.

Harry knew that his future held a life without Wilfred. Ganbri would not grow up with memories of his human Grandfather tucking him in to bed or making him tea when he was ill. Neither would Donna's children. That was the path that Time had decided for them. That was where their destiny led.

Harry had faith in Destiny once. Seven hundred years ago, he stood amongst the cheerful chaos of a planet he didn't know with the Doctor's hand warm in his own and believed that their destiny was to be together, to be happy. He believed once that the destinies of his children would be to grow up and do wondrous things. He believed once that things would be as they _should_ be—as Time decided. It was all for the best, really.

But things didn't change for the best until he stood up and fought against the tide of Time. He defied his own nature. He defied prophecies. He defied Destiny itself and, out of the ashes of a broken timeline, he grew a new and beautiful life.

He saw a glint of silver as Kahlia's hand began to withdraw from her sleeve again. He felt the muscles around his shevra tighten as it sensed a change in the flow of time.

Destiny made bad decisions, he decided. Destiny didn't care if his path led to happiness or not. It allowed civilizations to crumble and nearly led the Doctor to his death. And yet it was nothing but a structure of glass, delicate and easy to break if anyone were brave enough to try.

So he broke it.

Kahlia only let out the smallest of gasps when the Astrosteel blade forced its way into her back. Wilfred jumped a little in surprise, not yet knowing why Harry had moved so suddenly. It was hard to read the old man's expression through the blur that suddenly took over his vision.

Kahlia's knife clattered loudly when it slipped from her hand and landed on the floor, drawing the attention of both Wilfred and the Doctor. Harry pulled his own knife from her body and hot blood washed over his hands, coating his prized blade from Godforge.

Wilfred simply stared at him in horror. "Harry . . ."

Harry couldn't think of what to say. He couldn't even see properly. He quickly wiped his arm across his eyes but the blur came back almost instantly. He could just make out the shape of the Doctor standing next to his giant monster. Silent. Everyone was silent.

He didn't know what to do now. All he seemed to be able to think about was that she was bleeding and for some reason he couldn't stand the thought of it getting on Wilfred. Without thought, he dropped his knife to the floor and scooped Kahlia from Grandfather's arms.

Wilfred said something then, but he didn't know what it was. He saw the blurry shape of the Doctor step forward too, but he didn't do anything. Harry’s back seared with pain under the strain of Kahlia's weight and he allowed himself to slide rather ungracefully to his knees.

She didn't say a word. She barely even made a sound. Her grey eyes stared up at him wide and full of what he could only imagine was terror. She must have been figuring it out by now—the lack of energy and light. He'd aimed the knife with precision, straight through her shevra and severing the spinal cord simultaneously. She couldn't possibly regenerate.

She gasped a few times in panic and her hands began slapping at his face and chest. She hit him as hard as her weak body would let her and even tried to scratch him with her fingernails.

"Kahlia, stop," Harry said, voice coming out weak and breathy. "Stop it, Kahlia. Please. Just stop."

He pulled his arm out from beneath her knees, letting the floor support her lower half, and brought up his hand to grab at her wrists. She tried scratching at his eyes or his throat, but he was easily able to force her hands back towards her body. She was weak and growing weaker by the second.

He pulled her close against himself, trapping her hands against his chest so that she couldn't strike out. He kissed her forehead before tucking her head beneath his chin, curling her tight against him. She used to curl up like that when she was small and fall asleep.

"Close your eyes," he found himself whispering to her, trying to ignore the way her entire body was twitching in his arms. "Go to sleep. It'll be okay."

He ran his fingers through her hair and thought about how long it had taken him to learn how to brush it for her without pulling on it by mistake. He remembered holding her like this once after she had hurt her knee, just thinking in annoyance the whole time that he wished she would stop crying already. Her hair was so black now too. Just like Ganbri's, he thought. Just like his own in his first body.

Thoughts and memories were flying through his mind without control and it suddenly occurred to him that he might have been picking them up from Kahlia. She was seven years old and arguing about wanting to go to the Academy. She was ten and proudly telling him about the hovercraft she designed all by herself. She was thirteen and complaining about boys and how they should know that she didn't have any time for them.

A terrible and, to some strange little part of his mind that didn't seem to realize what was going on, embarrassing sound escaped him. His insides felt like they had twisted themselves into terrible knots and the world seemed to be swaying back and forth. This was a pain he hadn't felt in a long time and yet was far too familiar.

He clung to her so tightly that any living person would have struggled against it. Her neck was bent in uncomfortable position, her arm was caught in an odd angle, her face was pressed against his chest in such a way that she would not have been able to breathe.

But she wasn't breathing anymore.


	90. The Doctor

Everything was just a blur of images and sound. The Doctor’s head was throbbing and his legs were weak. It felt like his skull had fractured in a hundred places and that the only thing holding everything together was his skin. What kind of an idiot would try to fight for telepathic control against the Master?

He didn't even know what had happened until he felt the Beast stir and the thought of hunger drifted from the monster's mind to his own. The scent of fear was always enough to grab its attention, but the fear in a person who was dying was impossible for it to ignore. The Doctor turned his head just in time to see the flash of light as something thin and silver slipped from Kahlia's hand.

What was happening? He saw Harry's hand pull away from her and, even through the blinding pain, he could easily see the deep red drip to the floor. He felt like he was stuck in slow-motion, trying to think and react when everything else was just racing by without him. In the blink of an eye, everything had changed.

Harry was on the floor now and terrible noises were coming from him. His knuckles were white, gripping at Kahlia's clothing and her hair—trying to hold on to something that was already gone. The Doctor stumbled when he stepped towards them, falling. Wilfred caught him by the arm but wasn't able to correct his balance. Instead the old man just helped him slide harmlessly down.

On hands and knees, he clearly saw bright red droplets appearing on the clean floor beneath him. God, he was still bleeding. The world was spinning and he felt sick but he could still hear Harry. He could hear that awful sound and it was twisting his insides.

With a terrible amount of effort, he pulled himself a few inches closer to Harry, reaching out a shaking hand to place on his shoulder. He tried to say something. Anything. But he couldn't find any words to say. Instead he just moved his body so that he was sitting up beside the other Time Lord and slid his arm around his waist.

"I didn't know what to do," Harry said with a quaking voice.

Harry loosened his grip on the body just enough that Kahlia's head tipped back and her lifeless eyes stared dully into the Doctor's own. He felt his stomach turn and a whole new wave of nausea hit him. Luckily, Harry shifted again and her head flopped forward, hiding her face in his chest once more.

"You did what you had to, my boy," Wilf's voice answered, whispered so quietly that the Doctor barely heard him. "Kahlia made her own decision, lad. She didn't give you any other option."

That seemed to do little to console Harry. Would anything? The Doctor squeezed his arm around Harry's body a little and let his head rest on the other man's shoulder. He tried to think of some happy or calming thoughts to send but it hurt to even think.

All he  _could_  think about was how unclean it felt to have sticky blood drying on his top lip and around his mouth, all the way down his neck. He could feel the thin crust break every time he so much as breathed. But the cracks would fill with new blood and begin to dry again. It was just so gross. Someone really ought to do something about it.

He tried to think about what should be done next, but nothing came. All thought abandoned him. Even the sounds coming from Harry suddenly disappeared. All that was left was that dizzying sick feeling. It felt like he was stuck on a wheel, spinning round and round and round and he couldn't ever stop. He just wanted to stop. Just for a moment. Please?

Then, like an answered prayer, the darkness came and everything stopped.

When he next opened his eyes, the Doctor was somewhere else entirely. He had faint memories of Jack's face looking at him urgently. His mouth was moving but the Doctor had no idea what he said. Then suddenly he was here. The lights were bright and it didn't help his pounding head to look into them but he tried anyway.

He was in one of the TARDIS's medical rooms—the same one that he had kept the Master in so long ago. He brought a hand up to his face and it felt clean. His suit was gone, and he quickly realized that he was only wearing a pair of boxer shorts beneath the thin sheet.

He squinted his eyes and willed them to focus on the odd shapes he could see across the room. There were several stretchers, lined up flat against the wall, each with a white sheet draped over it from one end to the other. The shapes beneath the sheets were distinct enough for him to know what they covered.

"Jack!" a familiar voice barked from somewhere else in the room. "How many times have I told you?  _Leave it alone_!"

The Doctor stretched his neck to look at the source of the sound and saw Nista sitting on a bed of his own, also down to his shorts. His bronze body was riddled with scars, some of which were clearly identifiable as bullet wound, bites, and claw marks. He had a scalpel in his hand and a wound in his arm that seemed to be bleeding anew.

"I told you I can get it myself!" Nista protested but put the scalpel down all the same. "You don't even know what species I am! Why should I trust you?"

"Just do as the lady says, alright?"

He knew that voice too. Old voices. Gone voices. Voices that didn't belong on the TARDIS these days.

"Martha?"

Oh, that hurt. His own voice boomed in his head so loudly that it made him gasp. Maybe no one heard him speak, but they noticed when he brought his hands up, placing them firmly against his head to make sure his skull stayed in one piece.

"He's awake!" Donna's voice called, far too loudly, and he flinched again. "Martha! Gramps! He's awake!"

"Good. Maybe now someone can tell us what the hell's going on."

Mickey. That's who it was. Mickey Smith. What was Mickey doing there?

Donna appeared at his side and immediately grabbed his hand, squeezing tight. "Doctor, are you okay? How do you feel? Does it hurt anywhere? Do you need something? Water! Water, right? Can someone get him some water?"

"Donna," he managed to say when she stopped to take a breath.

"No? Not water? Do you need a pain killer or something? Martha didn't want to give you one 'cause, you know, you're an alien and stuff and Gramps couldn't really remember which ones to use. But now you're awake, you can tell us which one."

" _Donna_."

"Right. Sorry."

"Calm down, love," Wilfred said, appearing at Donna's side. "He just wants to see his baby. Isn't that right?"

Despite the way that his head felt like something was trying to break out of it and the way his stomach was churning away, the Doctor couldn't help but smile when Wilfred gently laid the baby next to him on the little bed. Nothing felt nearly as terrible once that tiny hand had wrapped around one of his fingers.

"Wait a minute,  _his_  baby?" Mickey's voice piped up again. "I thought that was  _your_  baby."

"Why do you say that?" Donna answered quickly in a nervously defensive tone. "Do I look like I've given birth? Do I look like I've put on weight or something?"

Martha was decidedly quiet, and the Doctor knew that he would have a lot of explaining to do. But not right now. Right now, he just wanted to rest with Ganbri in his arms. Safe.

Donna held his hand and brought over a cold washcloth to put on his forehead every once in a while. She told him that Harry was hurt but that it was nothing threatening. He was sleeping now, in a bed just on the other side of the room. Jack and Ganbri had worked together to get the Beast safely back in its chamber in the TARDIS and came up with the idea to find Martha afterwards. She was a doctor too after all. Mickey had come along to help, saying that he couldn't trust the Doctor with his wife after what happened with Rose.

Martha came to him a few hours later, when most of the others had disappeared to find food or showers or beds and the bodies had been taken to a different room. Wilfred had left the baby with the Doctor after a lot of convincing. He didn't think the Doctor was in any fit state to look over a baby at the moment, but he simply couldn't bear the thought of not having the child with him.

"Can I hold him?" Martha asked quietly after she pulled a chair up next to his bed.

"Yeah," he answered, nodding his head.

Martha reached for Ganbri without hesitation, lifting him carefully and cradling him against her body. "He's beautiful," she said with a smile.

"Gets it from me."

"So, he's really yours then?"

"Yeah," he said, very aware of the way Martha's eyes instantly travelled to look at the little band of gold on his left hand.

"I haven't . . ." she began hesitantly, looking down at the baby to avoid making eye contact with him. "I haven't seen Rose anywhere."

"Rose is gone," he answered, dreading the remainder of this conversation. "Safe, but gone. And she has been for quite a while now."

"Then who—"

"You don't want to know the answer to that, Martha," he interrupted quickly. "Trust me."

"I don't think there's a lot you could tell me right now that would put me off," she said, the stress clearly audible in her voice. "I get Captain Jack showing up and whisking me away without a moment's notice so that I can declare fourteen people dead and stitch together over two dozen more. I thought you were dead when I first saw you. You're wearing a wedding ring and you've got a baby. Then to top it all off, I find out that not only is Harold Saxon still alive but he's on the TARDIS and I'm expected to help him!"

"Mott."

"What?"

"He goes by Harold Mott these days," the Doctor said without even thinking. "Mostly we just call him Harry."

"What, he's not making you call him Master anymore?" she asked with a hard edge to her voice.

"No. Just Harry."

"Whatever," she scoffed, shaking her head. "I just want to know . . . if it's not Rose, then who the hell did you run off into the sunset with and start having kids?"

"Harry," he answered quietly.

"You told me that bit," Martha answered irritably. "I'm asking who you married now."

"Harry," he repeated with a bit more emphasis. "I married Harry—the Master, whatever. That's his son you're holding.  _Our_  son that we had together."

"Oh my God . . ." Martha looked like she'd been slapped. "B-but that's not—"

"We're not human, Martha. It's entirely possible," he snapped quickly. "Do you want me to explain the mechanics of it?"

A long moment passed in which she simply looked at him with her mouth hanging slightly open. He suddenly found it extremely annoying.

Martha turned her eyes back down to the baby, not nearly as adoring as they were before. "What's his name?"

"Ganbri."

"That's funny," she said quietly. "One of the men that I—"

"That's him," the Doctor interrupted. "The man that's here called Ganbri—he's the same person. He travelled through time to help us. It's all very complicated."

"Sounds like it."

He gave her a moment, to let her look at the beautiful being in her arms and come to terms with it. Whatever happened with Martha, no matter how much time had passed, he never felt truly comfortable with her anymore. He ruined her life, traumatized her family, and, even though he never meant to, broke her heart. How do you call yourself a friend after that?

"He's okay," Martha said after a lengthy silence broken only by Ganbri's occasional gurgles and coos. "The Master—Harry, you know . . . he's a bit banged up but he's okay. He'll be just fine with a bit of rest."

"Thank you."

"Can I feel better about the fact that you never wanted to be with me because you're married to a bloke now?"

He smirked. "If you like."

"Yeah, I think I will," she smirked in return. "There I was, pining after the Doctor only to find out he was into men the whole time. I'm sure it would make a lot of girls feel better."

"And greatly confuse or offend some others."

"Yeah, but that's their problem."

The rest of his time with Martha was fairly light-hearted. She told him a bit about how Mickey swept her off her feet and he shared a few stories about him and Harry. She laughed in the right places and showed a bit more interest than he thought was sincere and it was nice. When everything was said and Martha prepared to leave, she promised to call him if she and Mickey ever had kids.

She couldn't quite hold back the nervous chuckle as she said what was probably the last thing she ever thought she'd say to the Doctor. "We could set up a play-date or something."

Sleep did not come easily. Wilfred had taken Ganbri for the night and the Doctor treated himself to a sedative, but he was completely restless. He kept hearing the Beast snarling in his head, kept seeing the glassy gaze of Kahlia's dead eyes. He heard that terrible moaning that had come from Harry's mouth when he held the corpse of his daughter.

The sound startled him awake and he was terribly aware that her body was still somewhere in the TARDIS. "Harry?" he whispered as loud as he dared with a few of Martha's other patients sleeping in the same room, craning his neck to look across at Harry's bed. "Are you awake? Lahrre?"

Harry was turned away from him, so he couldn't see his face and he didn't seem to react. He knew without trying that an attempt at a telepathic connection would not end well for him. He was just considering getting out of bed and simply walking over when he noticed the reflection of a pair of eyes staring at him.

Nista never said a word, nor did he move or look away once the Doctor noticed him. Why was he watching so intently? What would he do if the Doctor did attempt to get up? He decided not to find out and laid back down to continue to fail to sleep.

The next day he was fit to get up and move, even if he still had a lingering migraine and the occasional wave of nausea. He helped Martha to check on her patients and give some finishing treatments to the others. He wanted so much to talk to Harry but it seemed wrong to do so with so many people around them. Besides, any time he got anywhere near the other Time Lord, he'd find Nista staring at him like a hungry animal and he quickly backed off.

They began taking people home then. First Martha and Mickey left with several promises to keep in touch. Then they returned the Mechanic and the Haephsian priests to Godforge, taking the bodies of their dead with them.

Brody and Ganbri gave each other a very tight and lasting hug as they said their goodbyes and swore to see each other again. It turned out that Brody really was his name, after all. Commander Brody Puccinith was one of the many decoys for the Ginu'un prince and he admitted to panicking and giving his real name when he was taken prisoner. Thankfully no one had believed him.

They received a formal thanks from the royal family and allowed them to take Sevil's body along with the bodies of their own. The Ginu'un soldiers sang of victory and glory when they gathered outside the TARDIS, and their songs carried her back to the stars.

They returned to the ruins of the Nightmare's ship to find the TARDIS that Ganbri had left there. That goodbye was harder than the others.

The Doctor hugged Jenny tight and promised that he would find her. He saw Ganbri from the corner of his eye with Nista, saying goodbye to Harry. His husband did not get out of his bed, but he did roll onto his back so that Ganbri could bend down to hug him. Nista shook his hand and bowed his head politely. They said a few words, but they were too far for the Doctor to hear.

"I suppose I should say bye to him," Jenny said quietly. "Even if he did threaten to kill me."

"I challenge you to name a person he  _hasn't_  threatened to kill," the Doctor answered quickly.

Jenny smiled. "You're right," she said. "You chose well, didn't you?"

As she walked over to Harry's bed, Ganbri and Nista headed straight for the Doctor. There was an odd moment where he wasn't quite sure what to say. Seeing his newborn child as a full-grown man was a bit odd, especially because he had no idea what kind of a father he was.

"Your Tokrah changed the flow of time," he found himself saying a bit awkwardly. "I don't know how that will change things for you."

"It might take me a little while to remember which memories are which, but I'll figure it out," Ganbri said happily.

They talked a little, chatting over silly things like Donna's ability to speak without breathing and Jack's ability to turn anything into a dirty joke. It was only when Nista made a joke about Harry always being just a little crazy that the Doctor even thought to ask.

"Does he ever get better?" he whispered nervously. "The attacks, the bad dreams, all of it . . . does it ever go away?"

Ganbri's eyes went from bright to heavy in a heartbeat. "No," he answered quietly. "He never gets better. But it's not really a problem," Ganbri added very quickly. "It doesn't—I mean, he's never hit me or anything."

"He's hit me," Nista added, raising his hand like he was in a classroom. "Mind you, everyone hits me. I really don't know why."

Hugs were passed all around, and many kind words of love and promises were exchanged. Ganbri hugged Donna extra tight and Nista actually pounced onto Jack's back at one point like he wanted a piggy-back ride. Jenny kissed the Doctor on the cheek and whispered in his ear that he needed to get the worried look off of his face and that everything would be fine.

The three off them went back to their lives, Jenny standing between the two boys and linking her arms with theirs. The TARDIS wailed significantly louder than usual as she flew back to her own timeline and the Doctor caught himself smiling a little. Apparently Ganbri was an even worse pilot than he was.

Ghanje had never been found. Jack swore they searched every part of Kahlia's ship and found no trace of him. The Doctor made the TARDIS run another scan for life over the ship's ruins and came up empty. He suspected that such a thing might happen when he decided to unleash the Beast and he knew, at the very core of him, that he would never see his old friend again. He kept Ghanje's bedroom the way it was, just in case he ever returned home, but it would continue to be just that odd locked door at the end of the hall for centuries to come.

He manipulated the TARDIS's gravity fields to move the wreckage and create a trajectory for it. Set just right, all traces of Kahlia's ship would get sucked into the nearest star and burned to nothing but memories and bad dreams. He gave it one last look and thought of how many cold bodies he'd left on that ship before turning his back on it forever.

He still hadn't spoken to Harry.

The TARDIS landed in Chiswick, in Wilfred's backyard. It seemed so odd suddenly that they were just supposed to go back to normal life now. He didn't really know what to do. What was he supposed to  _do_?

"Keep her parked for a few days, eh?" Wilfred said, clapping the Doctor on the shoulder. "I think everyone could do with a break. Harry needs some time. So do you."

It was good advice. Stay on Earth. Enjoy the stillness of it. Embrace a time when no one was after them. It would be good for Harry. And oh, how he worried about Harry.

He didn't know when exactly the other Time Lord had slipped away but the Doctor found himself alone once the others had left. Donna and Shaun returned to their home while Jack and Wilfred trekked across the backyard and into the small house for bed. The Doctor took the longest and least relaxing shower of his life, scrubbing out the crusted blood from under his fingernails, before dressing for bed and facing the worst and loneliest of silences.

The nursery door was locked but he could hear Ganbri happily gurgling away inside. He knocked softly, taking extra care to make sure it was only three times.

"Harry?" he said quietly. ". . . Can you open the door?"

There was a long pause before he heard anything. "No," Harry's voice answered quietly.

It felt a bit like getting punched in the chest—a little painful and making it a little hard to breathe. He felt a bit of stinging in his eyes and a sense of dread filled him in less than a second. All along he'd known what his actions might cost him but now that he was faced with it, it was almost unbearable to even think about.

Harry must have sensed the sudden strong emotions coming from him because he added, in a very soft voice that was hard to hear through the door, "Not yet."

"Okay," the Doctor answered quickly and eagerly, aware of the odd way his voice cracked when he said it. "I'll-I'll leave you alone, if that's what you want. That's okay. You take your time. Take all the time you need. I'll just, um, I'll just go to our room, alright? I'll go get into bed and . . . you come find me when you're ready, okay? . . . Harold?"

There was no answer. He put his forehead against the door, taking a deep breath and just wishing he knew what to say. He could hear Ganbri making the sorts of noises he made when he was getting tired and wanted nothing more than to be in there with the two of them.

"I love you, Harry," he said, still not completely able to control the wobble in his voice. There was still no answer. "I'll just go to bed then," he finished in defeat after another moment of silence.

He made sure to clear the floor completely of any and all items. There were only clean towels in the bathroom, every piece of soiled clothing went into the laundry hamper, and he even put his shoes away in the closet. He couldn't even think of sleeping yet, so he scurried around and dusted a bit too. He knew how much it bothered Harry when their room was untidy.

A couple of hours ticked by and the room was spotless. Even the mirrors had been wiped. Wilfred would be proud to see it.

The Doctor finally gave up and decided it was time to pack it in. It wouldn't do him any good if Harry decided he was ready to talk and the Doctor was too tired to pay attention. So he set a glass of fresh water and Harry's favourite book on his nightstand, ready for him whenever he decided to leave the nursery, and climbed into bed. He kept firmly to his own side, folded down the corner of the blanket on Harry's side to make it look welcoming, and made sure not to accidentally take any pillows that weren't his.

He laid awake for a very long time, worrying and fretting and hating the quiet. There was no warmth in his bed. There was no weight on the other side of the mattress to make it dip ever so slightly and inevitably pull him towards the center. There was no soft breathing or occasional sleepy grumble to break the silence. The blankets stayed firmly where they were, with no one there to kick them off in protest of the heat. There was no comforting hand to reach for or kisses to steal.

In the quiet, the Doctor twirled his wedding ring around his finger, hoping that the metal would warm up and he wouldn't be so painfully aware of how cold and heavy it felt on his hand. Kahlia's body was still on the ship somewhere. She was alone too now. Lying there, under a sheet with her glassy, grey eyes staring up at nothing. Cold and empty.

He didn't even know how he fell asleep in the first place in that miserable room, but he did know that, when he woke up, he was still alone.


	91. The Doctor

It was Wilfred who came to speak to him that afternoon about what to do with Kahlia. He arrived at the Doctor's bedroom door with two cups of tea in hand and ushered him away to the library for a chat.

"So, he'll talk to you but not me then?" the Doctor found himself saying bitterly as he took a seat. The combination of his pounding head, nausea, and a terrible night's sleep had put him in a particularly foul mood.

"Try not to think about it like that," Wilfred answered. "The man's just lost his daughter, Doctor. He's been through a lot. He just needs some time to himself."

"You mean some time without me."

"Well . . . yes, maybe that is what he needs," Wilf nodded his head and took a sip of his tea. "That doesn't mean anything bad though. Your emotions are running high too. You both need to be able to sort through them without having to worry about each other."

He stared straight into those bright blue eyes and saw the hint of worry that he was trying so hard to conceal. He swallowed hard and it took a lot more effort than he thought it would to ask the next question.

"Is he going to leave?"

"Doctor—"

"No, don't start that," he interrupted, suddenly angry. He could tell by the tone in Wilfred's voice that he was about to get some philosophical lesson or something equally evasive. "I let him build a relationship with me and carry a child without telling him that Kahlia was still alive. I drugged him in his sleep and made him watch while her men broke into our room and took me prisoner. I abandoned him in the middle of a battle while our son was regenerating so that I could attempt to kill his daughter.  _Then_  I used a monster to attack him when he tried to stop me. I have done things that I am  _not_  proud of. I don't need to hear about what it means to be family or how things will work out on their own. It's a yes or no question, Wilfred. Is he going to leave me?"

Everything had come rushing out of him all at once and he suddenly had to fight to hold it in. He leaned forward in his seat and turned his face downward, off to the side, then decided to pretend he was suddenly interested in the tea that Wilf had put on the side table for him. Anything to avoid looking the old man in the eye.

Wilfred gave him a moment to collect himself, waiting until the Doctor could look at him again before answering. "I don't think so," he answered quietly. "He hasn't said. Well, I mean, I haven't asked him. But I don't even think he's angry with you. I really do think he just needs some time. Just help him put his little girl to rest and let him grieve."

"Right," he agreed, finally picking up his cup of tea to take a sip, hoping it would calm his nerves a bit. "Whatever he wants. Anything."

"Donna's going to help me prepare the body," Wilf said slowly. "You know, wrap up her leg and some clean clothes. Things like that. Donna says she can put a little bit of makeup on her, you know, so that she doesn't look so . . ."

"Dead?" he offered.

"Yeah. That."

"Are you sure the two of you can handle that?"

"I think we've seen worse," Wilf answered with a nervous chuckle. "Anyway, Harry said that it's Tootsie tradition—"

"Tussenii."

"Right, that one.

"Tussenii tradition is to have a water burial."

"Yeah, that's what Harry said. We have to take her to, um, toffee . . . tosh?"

"Teffosh."

"That's it."

Teffosh was the Tussenii home world, a beautiful planet where the unending sea was thought to be sacred. All life came from it and to it must all things return. Many Tussenii believed that returning their loved ones to the sea after death was simply returning them to the womb of the planet, where they would be nurtured and healed, given new bodies free of pain and sickness, and be born again. They even attributed their bizarre ways of aging to their connection with the sea—back and forth, like the rolling of waves until the tide finally receded.

He remembered Harry talking about Teffosh when they were just boys, fascinated by the lore that weaved through Tussenii culture. He supposed it only made sense that it had been a Tussenii woman to give him his first child.

After they finished their conversation, Wilfred returned to Harry to further discuss their plans. The Doctor tried to rest, willing the relentless headaches and nausea to stop, but he couldn't seem to sit still. All he could think about was how he didn't want to have to sleep alone again.

He found himself fretting over their room even more that day, worrying that it might upset Harry somehow if it weren't clean enough. He didn't want an opportunity to reconnect with his husband to be ruined because Harry got annoyed with him over a pair of socks or a condensation ring on the night stand.

He let out his frustrations on the room, scrubbing everything clean from top to bottom. Everything was laundered, bedding included. Every square inch of it was sanitized. It was only after he was finished that he realized he had practically erased Harry from the room. His scent was gone from his pillow. His clothes smelled like lemons or some other rubbish. There was nothing real at all to show that Harry had ever actually been inside that room.

Suddenly it was disgusting, and the Doctor didn't want to be there anymore. He drifted from one room of the TARDIS to the next, convinced that he had some job to do and forgetting what it was the moment he arrived in whatever room he was going to.

Eventually he found his room full of broken things and opened the door. He stared in at the piles of ornaments and furniture, either destroyed or waiting to be. He remembered opening that door once to see Jack with Harry pinned beneath him, punching him as though he thought Harry was just as immune to damage as he was.

He had been furious with the pair of them. Reckless children. How dare Jack take Harry in there and treat him so carelessly? Who in their right mind would ever take his husband, pregnant or not, into that tragic cave of worthless shit and strike him like he belonged in there? Harry should never have even set foot inside that room.

His hand moved on its own, calmly pushing a Mesopotamian pot along the top of the piano it sat on until it reached the end and toppled over to the floor. It shattered with an impressive amount of noise and yet it was completely unsatisfying. He had no energy for this today.

He went to bed earlier than usual because he couldn't seem to think of anything else to do and nothing had eased the pain pounding away in his skull. He couldn't remember if he had thought to eat anything. He supposed it didn't really matter anyway. His stomach still felt uneasy and probably could use the break.

He woke to an empty, sterilized room. Harry's side of the bed was completely untouched.

The Doctor wished they had gone to Teffosh under better circumstances so that they could enjoy it for its simple beauty. The moment the TARDIS doors opened, they were greeted with the smell of salt and the sound of the waves gently washing the shore. The waters of the endless sea were more colourful than most planets, ebbing with blues, greens, and purples. The sand stood out in stark contrast—pure and solid white, probably the cleanest sand he'd ever seen. And over it all, the sky was constantly moving with wisps of white and blue light, similar to Earth's northern lights except that on Teffosh the effect was almost constant.

But the beauty of the planet was cast under dark shadows this day. The Doctor laid eyes on Harry for the first time in over a day when he entered the console room and he looked dreadful. The bags under his eyes showed that he wasn't sleeping any better than the Doctor was, and his face looked drawn and exhausted.

Donna held onto Ganbri while Wilfred and Harry pulled along the hover stretcher that carried Kahlia's body. Shaun, Jack, and Boris followed silently. Harry only glanced up and met the Doctor's eyes for a split second before looking ahead at the world beyond the open doors. He didn't say anything.

Wilfred and Donna had done a good job together. Kahlia looked beautiful and innocent, as if she really had been the young girl that her face portrayed. Her black hair shone like it was made of silk and every cut and bruise in her pale skin had been carefully covered up. Her mangled ruin of a leg had been bound in clean bandages, but even those were mostly hidden by her ankle-length gown and soft, white slippers. The dress was much like the one she'd worn on her ship the first time he'd properly met her—plain white satin that hung about her like it was fluid, though this one had flowing bell sleeves that covered any damage on her arms.

There was no fussing about with the locals. They knew why they were there. This area of the beach was specifically for returning people to the sea. A Tussenii man approached, wearing a sheer ceremonial gown in shades of blue, and joined their group without a word.

The Doctor saw the look on Donna's face as she looked at the man's attire and realized he had forgotten to tell her that Tussenii culture had no concept of modesty. Most people were perfectly happy to walk in public naked and clothes were often saved for formal events or special occasions. Even when wearing them, as this man was, clothes were purely for decoration and were often sheer or designed with many openings in the material.

A woman joined them next, wearing only a green shawl around her shoulders and a ring of beaded shells around her waist with a few strings of shells and small pebbles that hung from it, reaching her feet. Then came one that looked like a six-year-old boy, though he could have been older than the others really, with what resembled an orange toga draped loosely around him.

More joined them as they neared the waters until their group was double the size. There was a sort of glass dock that led them out over the sea where there was a platform large enough to hold buildings, made of the same glassy material so that it looked like they were simply walking on water. There were other groups, other families, dotted along the edges of the platform, lowering their loved ones into the water.

At that point, their Tussenii followers stepped forward to take over. They were led to the edge of the platform, where two thin branches of glass extended parallel over the water, the space between them cloudy with billions of tiny white specks floating around.

Two Tussenii women stood on either side of the stretcher and slid a thin rod beneath Kahlia's neck and ankles. A thin, translucent film reached out from the rods, gliding beneath her body until they reached each other and joined. Once the strange net had finished creating itself, they lifted Kahlia's body off the stretcher with ease and carried her over to the water.

The rest of the Tussenii that had joined them began to hum in unison, a soft sound that was reminiscent to the quiet whispers of waves. The women walked carefully out onto the thin platforms, carrying Kahlia between them, and very slowly lowered her down into the cloudy water. The tiny white specks suddenly became active, moving about her excitedly and sticking to her skin. The translucent net that held her body retracted, letting her float freely as she was slowly covered in white.

It was only then that the Doctor realized they must have been the eggs of nursemother fish. Nursemother fish were considered holy and were a bit like the equivalent to angels in Tussenii myths. Their eggs would not hatch until they had a host. They would wander the ocean in swarms until they found a body to attach to, then carry it out to the sea where the temperatures and currents were more favourable so that they could hatch and grow. The Tussenii believed it was the sea's way of taking back her people and letting them be born anew.

Finally, one of the Tussenii women looked over at their group and Harry gave them a wordless nod. One of them reached down and retracted another, identical net that had been holding in the swarm of eggs, releasing them to the ocean. The Tussenii continued their rhythmic humming as Kahlia's body was slowly pulled out into the open water, the sound growing louder as she floated away.

The Doctor's eyes moved over to look at Harry, standing there silently and keeping himself together surprisingly well. He wished that he had recovered fully before they came here so that he could reach out to Harry's mind and comfort him. He wished that he could know what Harry was thinking so that he would know if he could move beside him, hold his hand, hug him. Anything. He couldn't stand the thought of Harry seeing his daughter for the very last time and not having the comfort he needed.

He felt Donna's hand slip into his own and give it a squeeze.

Then Kahlia was pulled beneath the surface and, in an instant, she was gone. The humming stopped, and all stood in silence for a long moment. The Tussenii slowly drifted away from their group to help others with their burials, while they continued to stare out at the endless sea.

After a few moments, Harry turned away from the water. "Let's go home."

Harry's eyes stayed firmly looking at the way ahead. He didn't even look at the Doctor for the entire walk back. Donna walked beside him, nudging him gently with her elbow until he put his arm around her shoulders.

"Say hi to daddy," she whispered, holding Ganbri up high so that the Doctor could see him better.

It seemed odd that at a moment that was so heavy and uncomfortable, Ganbri was completely oblivious to it. The baby gave a delighted smile and a happy chirp when their eyes met, and the Doctor couldn't help but smile a little himself.

"There he is," she said, keeping her voice low enough that the others didn't hear her as she bounced Ganbri a little to keep him smiling. "Hi daddy."

The Doctor brought up his free hand so that Ganbri could grasp his finger and squeezed Donna a bit with his other arm. How did he ever live without Donna?

He had hoped to finally talk to Harry once they landed in Wilfred's backyard again. Donna took Ganbri and quickly scurried out the doors with the others, but it seemed that Harry was not as keen on a conversation as he was right behind them.

"Harry," the Doctor called. When Harry didn't stop he actually ran up behind him and grabbed his hand, only to have it ripped away. Harry didn't say anything. He didn't even look back. He just walked away.

The Doctor stood in the TARDIS doors, completely at a loss—conflicted. Part of him was furious. Part of him wanted to run up behind Harry and smack him in the back of the head. Another part wanted to run up and just grab him, hold on to him, beg him to just come back inside and talk to him. Then another part reminded him that Harry had just said goodbye to his daughter and that he was not himself. Mostly he was just confused.

He saw the others turn back with looks of concern. Jack actually began walking back towards the TARDIS. He shut the doors and locked them.

He took a second to try and calm himself, but it didn't work. Suddenly there were tears in his eyes and a pain in his chest and his hands moved entirely on their own. He grabbed at the stretcher that had been left leaning against the rail, letting out a scream of rage when he smashed it against the nearest pillar. He struck it again and again until the stretcher was nothing but pieces in his hands and scattered around the console room.

He didn't feel any better. He just felt childish now.

He turned around and his eyes immediately noticed the Daughter, peering at him nervously through a tiny mirror in the console.

"Go away!"

She vanished instantly with a frightened look in her eyes. He felt worse now. Why did he always have to shout at her like that? She hadn't done anything. She was just looking over him.

"Sorry," he muttered under his breath, even though he knew she wasn't there to hear him.

He cleaned up the mess he'd made, reminding himself that he had a room to break things in so that he wouldn't have to clean up, and unlocked the TARDIS doors again. He tried to eat a proper meal, but his stomach protested until he suddenly broke into a sweat and got sick. In the end, all he managed to keep down was some toast.

He tried to work but he couldn't focus. He tried to read but the pounding in his head seemed to make the words dance on the page until he felt dizzy. He got sick again and wound up lying on the floor of the shower until he felt that it had passed. He thought about running away to some far off planet to help him forget his troubles but he couldn't bear the thought of leaving Harry and Ganbri behind. Eventually he just went to the Bio Lab to sit and watch all of Harry's creations living and flourishing. Lily nuzzled against his ankle and let him pet her, but she regularly left his side in search of Harry.

Harry didn't even come back to the TARDIS to sleep. Wilfred came by in the evening to get some things for Ganbri and see how the Doctor was doing. He still felt unwell and wasn't much in the mood for talking so Wilf didn't stay long. The TARDIS hummed rhythmically and tried to sing him to sleep. It almost worked but, every time he drifted off, all he dreamt of was Kahlia's horrible glassy eyes staring blankly forward as she dragged herself back up out of the water. She would hiss and snarl just like the Beast with Mouse's ear clutched between her teeth.

He didn't bother to get dressed the next morning. Maybe later, when it was more likely that someone might come by. The sun wasn't even up yet outside.

He was careful not to overdo it on his breakfast after what had happened the day before. Rose's clock ticked loudly as he took one slow bite at a time, waiting to see if it would stay put before taking in more. Some toast, one egg, and half a banana were enough to have his stomach turning over and complaining loudly, but he did manage to keep it down. His head didn't hurt so bad either as long as he didn't do anything that required too much concentration.

He kept himself busy with tasks that didn't ask too much of him, mostly sifting through boxes of spare parts and trying to organize them. After a couple of hours, he decided that it was probably best to put some proper clothes on and make himself presentable. He tried to draw out his morning preparation process as long as possible, just to help pass the time. He was almost finished when he heard a door close in the hallway outside.

"Harry?" he called out, suddenly struggling to pull his other shoe on, stumbling over it as he hurried to the door. When he pulled it open, Harry was not there. But Jack was. He was just leaving the nursery with one of Harry's shirts in his hand.

"Hey, Doc," Jack said with an easy smile. "Did you—"

"What are you doing?"

Jack looked down at the shirt in his hands and his smile immediately turned from easy to awkward. "Uh, Harry needed a shirt."

"Why didn't he come get it himself?"

Jack scratched his head a bit. "He was just busy." Shifting his weight. Avoiding eye contact.  _Lying_.

"What the hell are you taking his clothes for?" the Doctor snapped, ripping the shirt from Jack's hands.

"Hey, now, it's just a—"

"Is he moving into the house?"

"What? No."

"Do you actually know that?"

"That's not happening," Jack said firmly.

"Then what  _is_  happening!?" He was shouting now, anger rising out of nowhere. Jack looked nervous. He could tell by his eyes that he was searching for words—for lies. Jack couldn't be trusted anyway. Useless.

The Doctor gripped the shirt tightly in his fist, part of him wanting to rip it to pieces, and pushed past the other man. Jack tried calling him back, started saying he would explain what he knew, but the Doctor wasn't interested in what Jack had to say. He wanted to know what Harry had to say. They'd been back on Earth for four days now and Harry hadn't even spoken four words to the Doctor.

He didn't really know what he was doing, and he didn't have any sort of plan. It seemed like his feet were just moving themselves and he was watching himself as if in a dream. He charged out of the TARDIS doors and strode across the yard. Shaun was standing in front of the back door, looking anxious, clutching a cell phone in his hand. Bloody Jack.

"Harry!" he shouted at the house, glaring at Shaun angrily as he changed directions. "You can't ignore me forever!" He moved across the lawn, away from the door and closer to the bedroom windows. Harry was probably hiding up there somewhere.

Shaun shifted uncomfortably as he watched. "Doctor—"

"This is none of your bloody business, Shaun!" he spat quickly. "That is my  _family_  in that house and you have no right to be standing where you are now."

Shaun closed his mouth and turned his eyes to the ground, but he did not move away from the door to the house. He quickly decided to simply pretend that Shaun wasn't there and looked back up at the drawn curtains in the windows of the house.

"So what are we doing then?" he shouted, watching carefully for any signs of movement in the house. "I've just been sitting around for days thinking about whether or not you're coming back. Damn it, I don't even know if you're okay! I don't know—"

"What's going on over there?" an unfamiliar voice croaked from across the yard.

"Sorry, Mrs. Kensworth," Shaun answered the old woman peeking at him from the other side of the short fence, shifting awkwardly. "Some personal stuff."

The Doctor glared daggers at her but the woman didn't seem to care and continued staring.

"I'm sorry for what I did," he began again trying to keep his volume a little lower and hoping the nosy neighbour would go away. "I was scared, and I didn't think I had another choice. I just wanted you and Ganbri to be safe, Harry. Maybe I didn't do it the right way but that was all I wanted. Can you please just come down and talk to me? Please!"

"What did you do, boy?" the old woman squawked.

"Mrs. Kensworth, you mind your own business, or I'll come over there and mind it for you!" Donna's voice roared, and the Doctor looked up to see her pushing past Shaun to get into the yard. "You go back to your bloody flower pressing or Margaret Giles will be hearing about where all the fancy tea cups in her shop keep wandering off to!"

The old woman gave her a scowl but turned around and tottered back towards her house. Donna said something in Shaun's ear and he quickly vanished back inside. It was only now that he was looking around that the Doctor realized Jack had come out of the TARDIS and was standing a few feet behind him, silently watching.

"Come on," Donna said in a commanding voice as she came towards him, reaching out and grabbing his hand. She took the shirt from his other hand and turned towards Jack. "Shouldn't you be doing something useful?" she asked him with an angry tone to her voice and tossed the shirt at him. "My Grandad asked you to get a bleeding shirt, mate. How hard is that to do? Get moving!"

"Yes, ma'am," Jack answered quickly, though there was an amused hint to his voice. Shirt in hand, Jack hurried over to the house.

"And you," Donna said, looking the Doctor in the eye as she dragged him towards the TARDIS. "You think we'd all be standing around doing nothing and letting you go mad in there just for the hell of it? You're thick! Bloody spaceman in all his brilliance doesn't take a minute to think that  _maybe_  Harry's not just having a good sulk? Did you forget that he's sick? You come out here shouting your head off like a bloody teenager . . ."

She grumbled like that the whole time she pulled him through the TARDIS doors, down the hallways, all the way to the kitchen. Then she practically shoved him onto one of the bar stools and threw the kettle on the stove to boil.

"Right," she huffed irritably, slamming a pair of mugs down on the counter. "You and I are going to have a little chat."


	92. The Doctor

According to Donna, Harry wasn't just not talking to the Doctor; he wasn't talking to  _anyone_. He talked to Wilfred a little, but it was only really if he needed something. Harry talked about what needed to be done with Kahlia's body and had made it very clear to everyone that he didn't want to see the Doctor until he had his anxiety under control, but that was it.

She told him that after they laid Kahlia's body to rest, Harry hurried into the house the way that he did because he was on the verge of an attack. He struggled with it all evening, often slipping into states of confusion and time displacement until Wilfred could help him back. Donna, Shaun, and Jack had been taking turns looking after Ganbri and running errands for Wilf.

"Why did no one tell me?" the Doctor asked angrily. "Why didn't anyone come get me?'

"We wanted to," Donna answered in complete exasperation. "Harry wouldn't let us. He insisted it would only make it worse and, after seeing how stressed out he got over it, we had to agree. That, and you had your own stuff to deal with. You didn't need more stress any more than the rest of us did. Grandad was keeping him mostly calm and under control so . . . We decided it was best to just not tell you what was happening so that you didn't charge in there and—well, you know, _be you_."

"I could have helped him," he answered sulkily.

"How?" she laughed. "He'd get stressed out just to look at you and, if you used any of your spaceman brain witchcraft, you'd get all sick and useless and pass out on us again."

"It's called telepathy, Donna."

"It's called people-shouldn't-be-able-to-do-that-and-it's-weird alien witchcraft."

For just a brief moment, he was able to smile and forget what it was that had him so worked up in the first place. Donna smiled too and let him enjoy it, sipping her tea with that mischievous glint in her eye. When he felt the weight in his chest return, she seemed to know, and she carried on with her story.

Harry did wind up having a full and proper attack in the evening. Nobody got hurt, though they were sure that things would have become violent if Harry wasn't injured and already in pain. Eventually they got him to settle but he was exhausted to the point of having trouble just staying awake. Wilfred decided that it would be best for him to just stay where he was and sleep, so the old man ventured to the TARDIS on his own to gather a few supplies.

Harry didn't sleep well. Donna and Shaun had gone to their own home for the night, but Jack told them that Harry had woken up several times in the night, shouting and panicking. Eventually, Jack dragged Wilfred's most comfortable rocker into the room Harry was sleeping in so that he could keep an eye on him. He said he heard Wilfred talking to him plenty of times in the night, even when it didn't sound like Harry was in a panic. It was a long night.

When Donna and Shaun returned in the morning, Harry was still not himself. He occasionally said something to someone who wasn't there, forgot where he was and what he was doing, and multiple times he was convinced that he was wounded or in danger. One particular moment of confusion had caused him to spill an entire pot of hot tea over himself and Jack was sent to fetch him a new shirt. Suddenly, Harry began to escalate again, thinking that the burns he felt were caused by some chemical. Wilfred was just bringing him down again when the Doctor appeared in the backyard.

Everyone was working so hard to help Harry through his attacks. Wilfred and Jack had been up half the night with him. Shaun was spending more time taking care of a baby than he ever had in his life and Donna was just trying to make sure that no one went hungry and trying to coax Wilfred into taking a nap. The Doctor didn't blame her for being angry when he started shouting at the windows and quickly undoing her grandfather's work.

"I just thought . . ." he began weakly, suddenly unable to look Donna in the eye. "He just wouldn't look at me, Donna."

"Did you see him looking at anybody else, dumbo? Did you hear him say a bloody word to _anyone_?"

No. No, he actually hadn't. Why didn't he notice that? Harry had kept his eyes either staring grimly ahead or looking at Kahlia's body the entire time they were on Teffosh and he stayed stubbornly quiet. The Doctor was too busy noticing that Harry wasn't talking to  _him_  to realize that he wasn't really being treated differently from anyone else in the group.

Well, that was embarrassing.

"When we were watching Ganbri yesterday," Donna said with an excited tone to her voice, looking at him with eyes that were suddenly bright. "Shaun and I started talking about baby stuff."

He felt the smile tug at his lips and his eyes automatically drifted towards Donna's stomach. "It's still very early you know," he warned, though his smile widened just the same.

"Shaun wants a boy. Wouldn't that be brilliant? A little boy calling me Mum. He could grow up with Ganbri, be best mates just like you and Harry. Except, you know, without all the fighting and trying to kill each other later on."

The Doctor remembered laying in a sea of red grass and looking at an endless blanket of stars, sharing his dreams with someone who was just as eager as him to see them come true. He smiled a little wider. It would be wonderful for Ganbri to have someone like that to grow up with.

"I suppose you want a girl?" he asked, happily imagining two children in Grandfather's garden.

"Yeah," Donna answered enthusiastically. "Ganbri could be like a big brother and watch over her. Keep her safe. Help her remember that she doesn't need boys to be special. And she could keep him in line. Tell him off when he's being stupid. Help him when he's sad and acting too tough to let anyone know."

A story that sounded oddly familiar. "Do you think of me as a big brother, Donna?"

" 'Course I do, dumbo," she answered without a second's hesitation, lifting her mug for another sip as the Doctor found himself feeling a little warm in the cheeks. "Anyway, we were talking about names for a bit too. Shaun likes Duncan for a boy, which is alright. We both like Marcus and Rowland as well. And for girls we were thinking maybe Lindsey? Shaun mentioned the name Violet, but I don't think I like that one. Then I thought that I quite like the name Annabelle."

For just a second, he held his breath, making sure he had heard her correctly. "Could be Annie for short," he said, half to himself as the smile stretched across his face even wider.

"Yeah!" Donna cried out happily. "Oh, I like that. It's so cute! But then, you know, when she grows up it's like a proper woman's name."

He felt a little warmth in his chest—a little skip of joy in his hearts that he hadn't felt for a while now. "Annabelle is a good name."

Donna stayed with him for another two hours before she returned to the house to help deal with the aftermath of the Doctor's earlier outburst. He was in much better spirits, but the noticeable absence and loneliness stung a bit deeper now.

He worried about what he had done and tried to remember word for word what he'd said. If Harry wasn't angry with him before, he probably was now. What if his stupid behaviour had ruined his chances?

Boris spent several hours at his side, but he didn't want to risk further injuring his healing mind by trying to have a proper conversation with him. Besides, Boris had been there during the last moments of Kahlia's life and the Doctor was not keen on talking about it. He chose to make small talk with the shadow and to try to simply enjoy his company, but nothing more.

He went to visit the Beast. It was sleeping peacefully in the mists of its chamber, completely healed now. He felt a strange connection to it now and suddenly felt rather sorry for it, sleeping away years, locked in a tiny glass prison. He wanted to open the chamber and stroke its dark skin, maybe talk to it a little and feed it. With Ghanje gone, he supposed he could let it out now if he wanted to. Suddenly he really wanted to.

He wanted to connect with it. He wanted to let it feel that he was sorry for the way he hurt it. He wanted to know if it was frightened of him now. Mostly he just wanted to pat it on the head and let it know that he wouldn't hurt it like that again but, with his mind still recovering, he doubted he would be able to control it yet if it turned savage. For today at least, it would stay sleeping.

He dared to eat a little meat with his dinner and, though it complained, his stomach was able to handle the chicken. He contemplated going outside the TARDIS again. He thought that maybe he could sit quietly in the garden so that Harry would know he was there if he wanted to talk. Even if he just wanted to say hello. Even if he just wanted to shout at him and tell him off. Eventually he decided that Harry knew exactly where to find him and that it was probably best to just stay away for now.

When he climbed into bed, he found his feet subconsciously moving over to Harry's side in search of warmth. Every time he changed positions to lay on his other side, he expected to see Harry lying there. And every time he didn't see him, he would roll back so that he was turned away from the cold emptiness.

The TARDIS sang to him and hours ticked by. He had moments of sleep where dreams came and went within seconds. He dreamt of the enraged look on the Prowler's face when he nearly knocked the Doctor unconscious, with Mouse's body at their feet. He dreamt of children curiously crowded around a bug of some sort in Wilfred's garden and daring each other to touch it. He dreamt of opening his eyes and seeing Harry standing in the doorway.

But Harry really _was_ standing in the doorway.

The Doctor felt his hearts suddenly beat at four times the speed, every muscle in his body suddenly tense and begging to spring across the room. Harry was looking around with a surprised look on his face, probably amazed by the state of cleanliness, and hadn't yet noticed that the Doctor was awake. He closed his eyes again quickly, allowing one to peek open just barely wide enough for him to make out Harry's shape.

He felt like he was in the presence of a deer or a wild cat or something else equally jumpy. He felt like if he breathed or moved or showed any signs of life that Harry might suddenly bolt. So he tried to look as though he were still asleep, every part of him as stiff and immovable as though he were made of stone.

Harry moved slowly about the room, being careful to be quiet. That was a good sign, wasn't it? Although maybe it was less of being considerate and more of Harry just wanted to do what he came to do and leave without confrontation. He decided to cling to the hope that he was being considerate.

He listened carefully for every sigh and deep breath. He heard a yawn once which made him feel another little spark of hope. Clearly Harry was in no hurry to get out of the room again. Harry moved to his side of the room, where the Doctor would be unable to see him unless he rolled over. He thought about pretending to just be changing positions in his sleep but quickly decided that it would look too suspicious.

He heard the rustle of clothing, Harry's wardrobe door creaking ever so quietly as he opened and closed it, the soft clink of hangers being put back up. He heard something get dropped in the laundry hamper and the drawers of Harry's dresser sliding open and closing again. The Doctor's mind excitedly told him that it was the sound of Harry getting undressed and digging out something from his pyjama drawer, but he tried very hard not to think too much about it, in case he was wrong.

After a minute, Harry's footsteps moved away from the bed to the other side of the room. The bathroom light turned on with a loud click and the door was pushed shut. The moment he heard the lock turn, the Doctor sat straight up in bed.

His eyes scanned the bedroom for evidence but, as always, Harry had cleaned up after himself. There were no clothes on the floor or drawers left open to tell the Doctor exactly what Harry had been doing. He decided to hope for the best and quickly turned over to make sure that Harry's side of the bed was clean and available for him. He straightened the sheet, fluffed the pillow a bit, lined the edge of Harry's book perfectly with the edge of the night stand, just like Harry always left it, and quickly went back to pretending to be asleep.

He heard faint sounds of the tap running and willed his hearts not to beat so wildly, as it made it difficult to hear. He twisted his ring around his finger nervously, hoping to calm himself, as he listened to the unmistakable sound of Harry brushing his teeth.

He felt his palms starting to sweat a bit. God, he was nervous. Even if Harry intended to come to bed or talk to him, what then? What if it was just the build-up to a massive fight? What if Harry was furious with him? What if he was simply too heartbroken to want to be with him anymore?

However nervous he thought he was, it was nothing compare to how he felt when the bathroom door opened again. His hearts were thundering away and every muscle was made of cement. Almost all of his focus had gone to trying to keep his breathing at a convincingly slow pace.

Every one of Harry's footsteps across the floor seemed slower than the last, and every one caused another shot of adrenaline through the Doctor's body. Harry paused at the bedside and the Doctor felt so nervous that he actually felt a bit sick to his stomach. He wondered why he had stopped. What was he looking at? He had lined up the things on Harry's night stand, but had he remembered to do his own? Had he just tossed his glasses and screwdriver onto the table haphazardly the way he did every night? Would that even bother Harry if he noticed?

But then he felt the sheets lift behind him and suddenly he was holding his breath. The mattress dipped with that blessedly familiar weight. He could feel the instant heat radiating from Harry's body to his own. That, just there, as it was, was so relieving and wonderful all on its own. But then Harry's feet moved against his own and he didn't even care that they were stone cold. He felt the warmth of that torso move so much closer to his own and Harry's breath was on the back of his neck.

Harry's hand carefully landed on the Doctor's arm and it automatically tensed up even more. Maybe Harry wouldn't notice? But the hand gripped him gently and moved ever so slightly as though to wake him up in the most careful of ways. Was he really trying to wake him up now? Did they really have to have that terrible conversation  _now_? Couldn't he just enjoy a couple of hours with Harry beside him before he had to face potentially crushing words? Just how angry was he that it couldn't wait?

"Lahrre?"

What?

"I'm sorry."

 _What_?

"Are you still mad at me?"

"What?"

His hearts had gone from racing to stopped in a split second.  _Lahrre_? Did he really just call him Lahrre?

"Sorry?" he found himself stammering, his body still frozen solid by the surprise of it all. "What would I—why would I be mad at you?"

"Well, I-I wouldn't talk to you," Harry answered quietly, though his hand didn't feel quite so stiff against the Doctor's arm now. "You know, you came and yelled this morning . . . and then I came in here and you were pretending to sleep, and you went all stiff as soon as I started getting into bed. I figured that you were still mad."

"I—" Suddenly every muscle relaxed. The breath he'd been holding released. He felt like he had suddenly woken from a bad dream. He quickly rolled onto his back so that he could look at Harry's face and immediately recognized the sad concern in those brown eyes.

"I just wanted a day or two to sort myself out," Harry said quickly. "That's really all it was supposed to be. I was going to try to talk to you when we went to Teffosh, but my head got all clouded up and I just couldn't—"

"Harold," the Doctor interrupted, eyes staring up at him wide as he dared to put a hand on Harry's face. He almost wasn't brave enough to ask but the way Harry's hand came up to hold his hand against the warmth of his cheek gave him courage. "Do you still love me?"

He watched every muscle movement as though his life hung in the balance. He supposed it did. Harry's eyes widened slightly, the corners of his mouth twitched upward, his fingers tightened around the Doctor's hand.

"Of course I—"

He'd heard all he needed to hear and quickly closed the space between them. There was more passion and excitement in that kiss than there was in any that had come before it. His lips reached out to Harry's with a starved desperation and it was the greatest feeling in the world to feel that desperation returned.

He brought his other hand up to join the first, holding Harry's head firmly to stop him from moving away. His spine curled forward, lifting him up from the mattress to get closer even though they were pressed flat against each other. Harry's hands worked their way around him, gripping the back of his shirt tightly while his arms held him firmly in place. Neither of them was letting the other go anywhere.

"I love you," the Doctor gasped out when they parted for the briefest of seconds. Harry responded by squeezing his arms a little tighter and moving his lips in a way that asked the Doctor's mouth to open.

They'd both been frightened of what would happen when they finally came face to face. The sudden sense of freedom that came with realizing they were no longer standing in a minefield called for nothing less than embracing what they still had and expressing the absolutely ecstasy there was in still having it.

The taste of narin in his mouth was more than welcome and he gripped Harry tighter in search of more of it. He wanted to connect, to  _bond_. More than ever before, he felt as though he simply wasn't complete without the other Time Lord being a part of him in every way.

"Wait, wait," Harry gasped for breath, clearly just as swept away with it all as the Doctor was. "Slow down. Your head—you're not—"

Oh, but wasn't it wonderfully hard to think straight in that fog of two consciousnesses?

The Doctor leaned up and kissed his chest as Harry struggled to find the right words. He swiftly undid the buttons of his pyjama shirt and flung it away, despite Harry trying to stop him. He lifted his hips, pressing into Harry's body eagerly and trying to tempt him into another kiss.

He knew what Harry had to say. But who cared about headaches and nausea in the morning when everything else could be so amazing right now? Consequences be damned, he needed to connect. He needed to feel Harry's soul infused with his own, right where it belonged. After all the madness he had gone through in the last few days, he just needed to feel that.

"Doctor," Harry gasped again, trying to push the Doctor's hands away from his chest. "We shouldn't yet."

He let Harry push his hands away only because he redirected them elsewhere. "I don't care," he answered quickly, struggling against the last two annoying pieces of material that were keeping them apart. "I don't care. I don't care. Harry, please. I need you."

He didn't often say things like that and he had yet to see Harry deny him afterwards. An odd, low kind of growl escaped Harry's throat and suddenly he was just as lost to it all as the Doctor was. A pair of strong hands assisted his own to remove any remaining barriers while Harry's lips and tongue gave devoted worship to the Doctor's long neglected neck. The next time their eyes met, he saw that Harry's pupils had blown up in size under the strong effects of the narin.

He let himself be moved and adjusted without the slightest attempt to resist. He tried hard to remember through the thick cloud of swirling thoughts not to grab or pull at Harry's wounded back as his husband settled between his legs. He felt himself already shaking in anticipation and, when Harry pushed inside of him, he let out a great moan of satisfaction.

Harry had barely begun to move and it had already become difficult to tell who was feeling what. There were fingers dancing over skin while others were tangling in hair. There were lips kissing while others were parted with a song of appreciative sounds. Did it really matter which one of them was doing what? Did anything matter at all when he could smell that ancient forest and hear a symphony led by the beat of a joyous drum?

Somewhere else he could hear Harry. His breath hard and ragged in his ear, a groan or a soft sound sometimes escaping. Somewhere, in the world of silver leaves and mountain tops, Harry's face was above him, eyes closed and lips parted, skin starting to show the first hints of sweat. He felt the warm water of that world washing against him, but he also felt the heat of Harry's body and the pleasurable force with which it drove inside him. He sensed that great animal prowling around him and felt every beat of Harry's love coursing through him.

He writhed with it all, his body not knowing what else to do but simply move with it. There was a small voice somewhere, reminding him that Harry's back was hurt, so he gripped tightly to his hips instead, pulling at him, willing him to somehow be even closer—deeper. It was all too much and yet somehow it couldn't possibly be enough.

He saw the beautiful, natural lights of Aurenis as words from his homeworld filled his ears. He caught some from distant memories and some even in his own voice, making promises of friendship and adventure and promises to stay together as husbands. He heard Harry's voice making such promises as well and felt the alien cold of a ring sliding onto his finger.

He felt the same elation he felt when he spotted what looked like a tiny little insect attached to Harry's skin. He relived the joys of feeling a tiny foot kicking through flesh, of rubbing Harry's shoulders and kissing him gently on the back of his neck to make him smile. The sound of a new-born child's cry filled the endless chorus of noise and he felt like his hearts might explode.

A wall came down and that icy wind broke through the heat. Suddenly there was gasoline and honey and stars that no one had ever seen before. A Beast ran rampant through his mind, older and more scarred than before, snarling in a terrible way. But the songs around him quieted the monster and it laid down peacefully with the other.

Those moaning sounds were much louder now, clearly heard over the singing and music. He wasn't sure who they were coming from. Maybe them both?

"Harry . . ."

That, at least, was his own voice, he was sure of it. That overwhelming world was becoming too loud to hear and too bright to see. He couldn't seem to feel anything anymore except for that wonderful sensation that was filling him in the physical world.

"Harry, I—"

He couldn't speak. He wasn't sure what he wanted to say anyway. He didn't really understand anything except that there was something he needed to happen and that he needed it now.

Harry's arms slipped beneath his back and lifted him up very suddenly. Through the noise and the fog he was able to work out that they were both sitting up now, Harry's arms wrapped tightly around his waist and making him move up and down. His own arms had wound around Harry's shoulders, his fingers buried in the locks of blond hair.

Oh, the sound! That beautiful sound of Harry so short of breath that cut through the white noise that everything else had become. It drove him to move faster, pushing himself down against that remarkable feeling again and again.

For just a brief second, there was silence and nothing but pure, simple light. Then it all burst with an energy strong enough to make his entire body lock up and that sensation of regenerating and being born again.

His muscles clenched tight and he heard a greatly satisfying gasp and cry emerge from Harry's mouth. He felt a powerful throbbing inside himself, increasing the pleasure that much more.

It took a moment for the intensity of it to pass. The fog receded and a little clarity returned. His muscles relaxed, and Harry relaxed with him. Their minds began to separate, and the Doctor couldn't even begin to care about the pain in his head that it was leaving behind.

The Doctor sat there, with his legs wrapped around Harry's waist and their foreheads pressed together, and just breathed. It was impossible to imagine that just earlier that day he was pondering over a life on his own. It was difficult enough to imagine that he had ever been on his own in his life.

This was where he was meant to be. This was where he should have always been.

"Are you okay?" Harry asked breathlessly.

He nodded. His head felt like it was about to split into a hundred pieces but what did that matter? All was well with the world.

Harry lowered him back down onto the mattress and withdrew, disappearing from the bed just long enough to dig through the hamper for a towel. Soon enough they were laying together again, limbs entwined as though they all belonged to the same body.

The Doctor’s head throbbed with pain and his stomach had begun turning over again but he just didn't care. Let it. Let his body do whatever it wanted now. As long as Harry was with him, he could take all the pain in the world.

"Where's Ganbri?"

"I asked Grandfather to take him for the night," Harry answered, burying his face in the Doctor's hair. "You want me to go get him?"

"No. It's alright for tonight."

"Whatever you want, Lahrre," Harry murmured, taking a deep breath and adding in a whisper. "Thank you for what you did yesterday. I know you . . . maybe Kahlia didn't . . . just thank you."

The Doctor tried his best to share some thoughts of comfort, despite the way it increased the pain in his head.

"Are  _you_  okay?" he asked quietly.

"Yeah," Harry said after a pause. "I'll be alright." He kissed the Doctor's forehead, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes to sleep. "I think we'll be just fine."


	93. Ganbri

Landing the TARDIS that day was one of the most terrifying things Ganbri had done in his life. For a second, he thought that it would be easier to go back to the chaos of Kahlia's ship than it would be to face his fathers.

"Do you think they'll notice we were gone?" he asked nervously. "We've only been gone for three hours."

"Well, if I wear my hair right, it might cover the spot where my head almost split open," Jack answered casually, running his fingers along his scalp. "And I don't think your dads really look at you too often, so they might not notice that your  _entire fucking body_  has changed."

"Thanks, J.J., that's really helpful," he answered with a scowl.

"Well, don't ask stupid questions then," Jack grumbled. "Now, I don't know what you guys are planning to do but I'm getting hell out of here before one of your dads show up to tear me in two and getting myself some smokes."

"Oh,  _don't_!" Jenny protested quickly. "You've been so good!"

"Are you serious? Jenny, I held this part of my head," Jack said quickly, using his hand to gesture at the large, swollen portion of his scalp that had detached. "In my hand. I actually _physically_ held it against the bone so that it didn't fall off. We literally just survived a war. If that's not an appropriate time for a goddamn cigarette, I don't know what is." He grabbed his watch that he'd left in the TARDIS for safekeeping and slipped it on, pressing the button on the side to activate the shimmer. With an odd ripple of light, his teeth were just like anyone else's and his eyes had turned from shining gold to honeyed brown. He looked like any other young man on the street.

Jack had just turned around to leave when the TARDIS doors flew open. Banni was standing outside, his hair a terrible mess where he had clearly been running his hands through it non-stop and his cheeks a little flushed. Ganbri expected Banni to shout or, at the very least, to put on that stern, intimidating look of his as he gave them all a talking to but that didn't happen. Banni took one sweeping look at the three of them and his hand shot up to cover his mouth.

"Hi, Dad," Jenny said weakly.

Banni pulled his hand away and revealed a face that was truly terrible to see. "Is anybody hurt?" he asked with a slight quiver to his voice. His eyes already had a bit of a glisten to them, but no actual tears had formed. He knew exactly where they'd been and what had happened. Ganbri wished that he didn't know so that he could lie—make it sound like it wasn't as bad as it was.

"No," Ganbri answered him quickly. "Well, J.J. messed up his head a bit but Martha stitched him back together. Jenny and I are fine. Well, except . . ."

Except getting shot in the chest and regenerating. That had hurt. Really, he had died. But it didn't matter as long as they were okay now, right?

Banni swallowed hard and nodded his head, taking a moment to soak in the situation. "Uh . . . come and see me tomorrow, J.J.," he muttered quietly, stepping in through the TARDIS doors. "I'll have a look at it and see how it's healing."

"Yes, sir," Jack answered with surprising enthusiasm as he reached out to shake Banni's hand. "And, can I just say something? I mean, no offense to you now, sir, but you were pretty badass back then."

"Yes, thank you, Jack," Banni answered with an immediate edge to his voice. "I think you should go home now."

"Oh, yeah, 'course," Jack answered, shifting his eyes a little. "I was just thinking that I might—"

"Go home.  _Now_."

There was a moment's pause in which Jack looked a little awkward. Ganbri didn't hear a whisper of thought trickle out on its own but Banni must have gone looking for it because he very suddenly snapped at the unspoken argument.

"Don't make me repeat myself! Jack is worried sick about you, so go home  _now_!"

"Yes, sir." And with that, Jack sprinted through the TARDIS doors and vanished.

Jenny was lucky. She always got to skip the whole I-changed-your-diapers-and-watched-you-grow-up guilt trip routine and never got in much trouble because she had always been considered a capable adult. It seemed that Ganbri never got past eleven years old in Banni's eyes though.

She simply walked up to him in that way she did when she was pretending to be shy, placed a hand gently on each of his shoulders, and kissed him on the cheek. "I'm absolutely fine, Dad. I'll just go back to my flat then," she said calmly, giving him one of her best and well-practiced smiles. "Call me. Or I'll call you and I can come around later if you want. I just want to go home and shower real quick—maybe take a nap, alright?"

"Alright, love," Banni answered, giving her a strong hug and kissing her forehead twice before he let her go. "You call me when you get up."

"Will do."

And just like that, Jenny was off the hook. She bounced past Banni to the doors and looked back to give Ganbri a supporting thumbs up and mouth the words ' _good luck'_. He supposed he could take some solace that at least J.J. was probably going to have his hide stripped off when he got home. Uncle Jack was not the sort of man that anybody wanted to get on the bad side of.

Although, after what he had seen it seemed that most of the people they had grown up with were not nearly as soft as he had once thought. He thought of Uncle Shaun, who helped Ganbri build his first engine when he was just a kid, and wasn't sure if he would ever forget the day he painted the walls red. He never would have dreamed before that Auntie Donna, whom Ganbri had rescued from spiders and beetles since he was just a boy, had ever pulled a trigger on someone.

Even Tokrah, whom he had always known was a dangerous man to cross, had stunned him. All the stories he'd heard, all the bragging he heard between Tokrah and Uncle Jack, all the looks of inspired fear when he went to a new planet and mentioned the name Master—none of it prepared him for what he had seen. Tokrah was unbelievably fast and terribly efficient. There was no hesitation, no real thought process, just instinct. He had always known that his Tokrah could kill, but he'd never known that it was as easy and natural to him as breathing. He'd cut down men as though he were simply cutting branches from his path and paid no more mind to the blood that splattered upon him than he would to a few raindrops.

That was the man who had read him bed time stories and checked the closet for monsters with a cricket bat in his hand. That was the man who put on music while he cooked and would launch into a solo dance until he could drag someone,  _anyone_ , into dancing with him. That was the man who had nearly turned green and had to look away when Ganbri broke his arm when he was eleven years old.

And then there was Banni. Right there, in front of him, with the same face he'd had for Ganbri's entire life and yet . . . he just looked so different.

The scar on his forehead was not just an odd white line in his skin, but an open wound that bled—that was red with inflammation and purple with bruising. The curiously crooked fingers on his right hand suddenly looked miraculous after seeing nothing but bloody stumps there. The ring on his left hand was no longer something that he wore simply because all married people wore them, but something that meant so much more. And that darkness in his eyes . . .

Back on the ship, as they hurried to safety, they turned a corner and saw the light atop the TARDIS glowing like a beacon. The lights were all out, with only some very dim emergency lighting to show them where the walls were and nothing more. Ganbri had noticed an odd smell and a coppery taste to the air but assumed that it must have just been either himself or someone else in the group, coated as they were. But, when they ran towards that welcoming light, they travelled down the path of the Doctor.

Shaun had been the first to slip on the slick surface. A second later, J.J.'s foot tripped on something and he nearly fell. Jack fished out a flashlight from somewhere and turned it on, revealing what was before them. There were no real  _bodies_ , only parts. Limbs and torsos and insides . . . almost like they'd been dropped into a blender for a few seconds. And the floor was so coated in blood that they wouldn't be able to run down it without slipping. Ganbri had never seen anything like it.

" _The Doctor's been here,"_  Jack announced without even needing to think about it.  _"Let's move."_

That was the man who had been known as the only grown-up who was  _always_  willing to play hide-and-seek. That was the man who would put twigs in his hair and mud on his suit and pretend to be a giant while Ganbri and the other kids squealed and ran away. That was the man who would lift Ganbri off his feet for a random cuddle and took care of him when he was sick.

How was it possible that they were the same people?

He expected Banni to throw a right and proper fit. He expected to hear about being reckless and not thinking and that, no matter what the standards were on Earth, twenty-seven years did  _not_  make him an adult yet. Instead, his father just looked at him with that terribly burdened look. He saw the way those dark eyes were slightly watered, the way Banni pulled at his crooked fingers as he did often when he was uncomfortable, and finally the way that his lips twitched, trying to form words and losing strength the moment he tried.

He remembered that bloodied hallway that was left in the Doctor's wake and suddenly realized that his Banni was remembering it too.

"Come on, Dad," he said quickly, opening his arms. Banni didn't hesitate—he never did for hugs. "It's okay." Ganbri made sure to hug him tight so that Banni wouldn't sense any hesitation. There was a long moment in which neither of them said or did anything.

"You're so tall now," Banni chuckled a little. "Harry will sulk over it."

Usually when he gave his father a hug the top of his head would just reach Banni's nose. Now they were almost the same height and it did feel strange. He remembered being fifteen and realizing that he was actually strong enough to pick his parents up. It drove his Tokrah crazy and he kicked almost violently until Ganbri put him down again, but Banni was so tall that he would simply put his hands against the ceiling and plant his feet firmly on the floor so that he didn't budge. He then responded by picking Ganbri up, shushing him like he was a baby when he kicked and screamed to be put down, and carried him all the way to his bedroom and dropped him on his bed, declaring that it was nap time.

Yes, Banni was the man who left a trail of blood and body parts and burned entire planets from the sky. But that didn't mean that he wasn't just Dad as well.

"Any lingering effects from the regeneration?" Banni asked after a moment, pulling away and hurriedly wiping his eyes. "Pain? Headaches? Dizziness?"

"No, no, and no," Ganbri answered easily. "You told me what to look out for and I've been paying attention. Everything is perfectly normal."

"How are you handling the memories?"

That was a bit tricky. He suddenly had the memories of two lives that were the same and yet very different. He remembered growing up with and without Grandfather. In one life, there was an old house a few blocks away that had been empty for years and years, while in another, it was occupied by the oldest man in the U.K. Grandfather was one hundred and nine and still pretty damn healthy—a fact that he explained away by telling people that his grandson was a doctor and good medical care did wonders. Technically it was true, though saying  _alien_  medical care might have been more accurate.

Holidays were different. Weekends were different. There were new adventures that hadn't happened before and some that hadn't happened now. He remembered some bad days in which he knew for certain that his parents were fighting with each other but some of those days hadn't happened now.

"It's a bit confusing," Ganbri admitted. "I don't think the regeneration helped. But I'm working it out. It's alright."

Banni looked at him with unconvinced eyes. "I don't want you going out anywhere by yourself for a couple of days," he said firmly. "Wait for your body to settle."

"Okay." He felt that was unnecessary, but it wasn't worth an argument. Besides, he doubted that he would want to go anywhere for a little while. Even if he did, Annabelle was likely to be glued to his side once she found out what happened. That wouldn't be so bad.

"Do you want to talk?"

He did his best to smile. "No."

"Okay."

"So, where's Tokrah?"

"Harry is at Grandfather's house," Banni said quietly, with a sudden serious tone to his voice. "The moment he realized that all three of you were gone, he worked it out and . . . We've all been dreading this day since you were a baby, Ganbri. He's already almost had an attack and he's very upset . . . maybe a little bit angry."

"Angry?" Ganbri repeated with surprise.

"I don't even know. He seems to be under the impression that you should have asked him to go back for you. You know how he gets," Banni sighed, running his crooked fingers through his hair. "I'll go talk to him and let him know you're back. I'll try to delay him a bit—say I promised to get you food or something."

He knew what was coming next. It was what Banni did whenever he had managed to upset Tokrah and it was what he instructed Ganbri to do whenever he had done the same.

"I can probably get an hour. That's enough time to get the kitchen and the sitting room done easily. And make sure you fold that basket of laundry before anything else. He asked you to do that yesterday and we'll both be hearing about it if it's still sitting there. And try to—"

"Clean everything," Ganbri interrupted. "I know, Banni."

Both his parents had very specific instructions on how to handle the other if they were upset and, for as long as Ganbri could remember, Banni's had always been to scrub the entire house down as though he were combatting some deadly disease. It did seem to work though.

Banni had clearly got a start on the house cleaning. Ganbri had an image in his head of Banni rushing Tokrah to Wilfred's the moment they realized the TARDIS was gone, then rushing home again to purge the house of all dust and grime. It definitely had a strong smell of cleaning chemicals to it.

His cell phone was sitting on the kitchen table where he'd left it. It was so bizarre to think that the last couple of weeks had been packed into three hours. He had four missed calls and about a dozen text messages from Annabelle.

' _Your dad just called me looking for you. Where you hiding out?'_

' _Mum just got a call from your dad and she's FREAKING OUT! Where are you!?'_

' _Is everything okay? What's going on?'_

' _GANBRI! Call me, you idiot!'_

They carried on, using more capital letters and exclamation points with each message. All Annie knew was that he was gone, everybody seemed to know something she didn't, and that it was something to be scared about.

At the end of them he had a message from J.J. that said very simply ' _Jack's pissed'_. It was very likely that they wouldn't see each other for a week or two.

He would call Annie later. He didn't feel up to explaining to her why his face was different or where he had been. Besides, he had cleaning to do.

It felt strange and yet comforting to sit down and do something as domestic as folding laundry. Scrubbing stubborn marks on the kitchen counter and struggling with a heavy vacuum cleaner seemed like the last thing to be worrying about after the things he'd seen. But he did it anyway. He supposed that's what everybody else did too.

He didn't like how skinny his new body was. It may have had better teeth and lacked the annoying mole on his hip, but his limbs were too long and awkward and he kept overestimating his strength. He'd have to ask Jack to help him train up again to regain all the muscle that had vanished. His hair was weird too. It was too long and there was one annoying strand that kept falling into his eye. He'd just have to shave it when he got the chance. He'd just have to hope that his new face could pull off a buzz cut.

Regeneration was not all it was cracked up to be.

There were pictures in the house that weren't there before. In another life, his parents didn't have many photos of themselves and Banni didn't put any photos of Wilfred on display for fear of upsetting Tokrah. In this life, there was a group photo from their wedding day sitting proudly on a book shelf. The hallway was lined with photos from Ganbri's childhood that hadn't existed before. Grandfather always insisted on taking lots of photos.

He heard the car pulling into the driveway and he quickly made his way back to the living room. He sat down on one the sofas and quickly focused on opening his mind while keeping some of the more disturbing images tucked away safely. When the front door opened, he felt Tokrah's mind reaching out to his before they even laid eyes on each other.

He sensed some anger, yes, but fear more than anything else. Tokrah's mind was chaotic and disorganized in his stressful state and it grabbed hold of Ganbri's without caution. It was uncomfortable—too forceful and clumsy. He tried to push it back out, but Tokrah was persistent.

"Why didn't you come to us?" Tokrah's voice barked as he entered the room. Definitely angry. "What were you thinking?! Charging off on your own without—"

"I wasn't alone," he answered quickly. He shouldn't have. The look Banni shot at him confirmed that immediately. When Tokrah was mad it was always best not to talk back until he finished his initial rant, but Ganbri was tired and he didn't like the invasive feeling in his head.

"How old are you?" Tokrah growled next, physically grabbing him by the shoulder to get his full attention now. "You think three kids who haven't even passed their first century yet are qualified to be time travelling on their own? Let alone meddling with wars and battles!"

"Dad—" he tried pushing Tokrah's mind away again, but it stubbornly pushed back, refusing to go anywhere.

"I don't want to hear about it! On Gallifrey, you'd still be in school and wouldn't even be  _dreaming_  of pulling a stunt like this! You are a Time Lord, Ganbri, and that means, no matter what your friends say, you are still under my authority. If we just let you live according to the standards of whatever century of whatever planet we happened to land on, you'd have a twelve-year-old wife and a household of human slaves."

"Dad!" he shouted, shoving away the hand that gripped his shoulder. "What the fuck?"

Tokrah's left hand shimmered gold ever so slightly. He was shaky, his voice unnatural. He was angry without knowing why or being able to contain it. Ganbri decided to just open his mind and let his father in, that they might communicate better.

He saw what he had seen in Banni. There were the remnants of his fear that Ganbri might not come home mixed with the overwhelming relief that he did. And then there was the shame. Tokrah's mind was sifting through images of the Nightmare's war, some of them were images that Ganbri hadn't even been there to witness. There were soldiers dying, Jack pointing his gun at the Prowler's head while awaiting instruction, Banni on his knees, looking like he was in crippling pain with blood streaming down his face. He saw the way Jenny tensed up when a shotgun was pointed at her spine and the look of betrayal in Banni's eyes. He saw the handle of an Astrosteel blade with a missing diamond, embedded in the pearly flesh of Kahlia.

He sent images back. He shared the relief of knowing that his Tokrah was protecting him when he was preparing to regenerate. He shared the comfort of bandages on scraped knees and the admiration for a teacher with true passion. He shared respect for a great warrior, once soaked in the blood and radiating power, who had chosen a peaceful life of early mornings and endless laundry.

Tokrah was quiet, his eyes staring at Ganbri through a thin, watery veil. His breathing had slowed, the golden light vanished. Ganbri made sure to show him the images of slaughter in his head, knowing that he would find them regardless, and let him feel that there was no evil attached to them.

"I don't think of you any differently," Ganbri assured him, thinking of the man that he first saw bloodied and bruised nearly twenty years ago, stubbornly facing pain and possible death in order to carry a small Alreesh boy to safety. "But I do understand you now. Better than ever before."

He reached into his father's mind and tucked away the anger there. He took the fear and uncertainty and put it back in its proper place. There was no room for such things now. His parents had suffered enough.

"I hoped you would be older," Tokrah said quietly, the anger deflating from him quickly.

Ganbri smiled a little. "I don't think a few years would have made it any easier."

"Quite right," Banni answered, reaching out and grabbing Tokrah's hand. "But you're home and you're safe. That's all that matters."

He felt the warmth of Banni's consciousness pressing into Tokrah's, so he quickly withdrew. Banni had far more years of experience at comforting him and, besides, he was suddenly very tired. Tokrah took a few seconds to breathe and let Banni guide his mind and soon the shakiness in his hands had stopped.

Tokrah managed a small smile. "You hungry?"

Banni was standing just behind Tokrah, where he couldn't be seen, and began nodding his head vigorously.

"Yeah," Ganbri said, earning a wink from Banni.

Tokrah was always happiest with something to do. If he had something to focus his attention on, even something as simple as cooking, he was far less likely to have any sort of attack. Ganbri gave him a word of thanks, Banni kissed him on the cheek, and he hurried off to the kitchen.

"I told Annie you were safe," Banni said quietly, a small smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. "I told her that you were tired and needed rest. She won't come breaking the door down if you don't feel up to calling her today."

"Thank you."

". . . You just talk to us when you're ready, okay?"

"Okay."

He took a couple of days to be normal for a bit before he spoke of the war. He took Annie to the cinema and tried to tell her all the things he'd regretted not telling her, but the words didn't quite come out. He said something about worrying that he was never going to see her again when he got shot, but the rest was just a bunch of nonsensical half thoughts and awkward silences. Eventually Annie just took his hand in her own and smiled, giving him permission to stop talking.

J.J. was under house arrest for the first week but they were allowed to visit. He mostly just complained about the way his head ached and how frustrating Jack could be sometimes. It was easy to see that he hadn't quite adjusted to domestic life again and that his aggression was simply simmering beneath his skin. He always got that way after he had tasted blood but it always faded away with a little time.

Jenny slipped perfectly back into normal life. She was bouncy and cheerful as always, coming by in the afternoons to try to convince everyone to get out in the sun for a bit. The only thing that even suggested anything had happened to her was that she was slightly less friendly with Tokrah than before. She hugged him in greeting when she arrived at the house but didn't kiss him on the cheek the way she usually did and there were sometimes tense silences between them. But Jenny understood war and she was forgiving. Ganbri was sure the tension would pass soon enough.

After a couple of days, Ganbri began talking to his parents about what happened. They asked a lot of questions, but they were good at not being too pushy. He didn't like the darkness in their eyes or the heaviness in their faces whenever they discussed the battle and he would put a stop to the conversation if he felt they were getting too emotional. He surprised himself a few times when he spoke because, though he felt perfectly calm and not upset, he would suddenly realize that his hands were shaking or that his voice had gone a bit odd. He tried to blame it on his new body and, though his parents were quick to agree, they didn't look the slightest bit convinced.

It had been nearly two weeks when Banni suggested that they go have a poke around the Haven. It had been locked and nobody had been inside since that Christmas Eve, when an alien voice threatened to burn the planet for the sake of the Star. Ganbri had never had a chance to even look at the room he both designed and was born in so he quickly agreed.

It was small but still a little bigger than he thought it might be. Tokrah hopped on the bed the moment they entered the room and quickly got himself comfortable.

"I punched the wall here," Tokrah said, pointing out a small dent near the bed.

"More like you flailed and the wall got in the way," Banni replied with a smirk.

Tokrah simply shrugged and folded his hands behind his head, looking as though he were going to take a nap. "Make your body do what mine did and we'll see how much you flail."

Banni raised the surgery table from the floor and told Ganbri about those frightening hours. He saw the signature he'd left on the back of the door of the Haephsian Sun with his name beneath it and felt an odd sense of pride. Tokrah began telling him about what a good baby he was and Banni joined in. His black hair was lovely, his cry was adorable—all the things they loved to say whenever someone would listen.

Banni joined Tokrah on the bed as they reminisced together about the bizarre two months they spent, holed up together and pretending not to be there. Ganbri only half listened to what they were saying as he poked around the room further. These were the tools that brought him into the world. This was the first basket he ever slept in. It felt a bit strange to stand in this room now. Until recently, it had always seemed like nothing more than a story—like it almost didn't exist.

His parents were talking about the way Banni would sneak off to train with the Beast while Ganbri entered the closet to have a look. He felt rather proud of himself as he observed his handiwork. Everything, down to the last detail, had been chosen specifically by him.

"Then, of course, I never told you," he could hear Banni's voice chattering from the main room. "But there was that one day that Shaun caught me on my way back."

It amused him to see that none of Tokrah's clothes were to be found anywhere except for either hanging up or in the hamper, while Banni's were strewn about carelessly.

"What are you talking about? No, he didn't," he heard Tokrah arguing.

"Yes, he did! I was bleeding quite a lot and he offered to help me. Then he said he'd keep the others away from the area for me."

Ganbri found a small stuffed giraffe on the floor of the closet and recalled one of his parents mentioning a giraffe he had when he was a baby. It was a cute little thing and, though he couldn't remember anything specific, he was sure that someone had told him a good story about it. He bent down to pick it up, deciding to take it with him, when he spotted a strange marking on the wall.

"He can't have," Tokrah was still arguing, a bit louder this time. "Your head must have been all jumbled up from you mucking about with your telepathy. It didn't happen."

"I'm telling you, it did. How would you know anyway?"

He picked up the prized giraffe and knelt closer to look at the odd marking. It hadn't been added; it was a part of the wall itself. Some kind of flower? He never put that there. He was sure of it. He'd programmed the room from scratch and he never told the ship to put that marking there. Perhaps it had happened when the ship glitched? It had done a couple of odd things while he programmed it, even going so far as to say that someone was already inside.

But that was impossible.

"Because we snuck off the TARDIS with Ganbri when the ship returned to Earth for Christmas," Tokrah's impatient voice drifted in through the doorway.

He reached his hand out to touch the marking to see if it was carved or not. To his surprise, the second his finger touched it, it sunk into the wall like a button and lit up.

"Shaun didn't join us until  _after_  Christmas. He wasn't even on the ship when we were in hiding!"

There was an odd silence as Ganbri watched a sliver of light cutting its way through the wall.

"What?" Banni's voice responded to Tokrah, almost argumentative but clearly confused. "But I . . ."

"You were off your rocker," Tokrah said hastily as the sliver of light began to widen like a doorway.

"No! No, no, I wasn't," Banni protested. "It really happened."

In a split second, the light had created an opening the size of a door and, on the other side of it, was a girl. Ganbri stared open-mouthed at the sight of a young woman restrained with metal cuffs to a chair in some bizarre hidden compartment.

"Are you the Doctor? Did you change your face again?" she asked urgently, voice nothing more than a dry whisper. How long had she been in there?

Ganbri quickly shook his head. "No. But I, uh . . . I know where to find him."

"I need the Doctor," she said with even more urgency, pulling against her restraints with eyes darting wildly about for an escape. "I need to find him before it knows where I am! It's coming!"

Ganbri felt a little dumbstruck and not really sure what to do with this most unexpected of surprises. "Dad!" he shouted.

"What are you calling your dad for? Help me out of this thing and get me to the Doctor! You don't understand—"

"DAD!"

He heard a tumble of things falling over as both his fathers charged across the main room and into the closet. Tokrah instinctively grabbed Ganbri by the shoulders to pull him away while Banni stepped forward to see.

Banni had a look in his eyes that Ganbri had only seen on very rare occasions. It was a look of absolute surprise, fear, and happiness all at once. The look on the woman's face was very much the same.

She smiled up at Banni as though her heart was fit to burst with joy, though there were tears in her eyes. "Doctor."

The terrified look on Banni's face gave way to a grin and he sounded completely out of breath when he whispered back. "Rose."

**End**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading this whole thing ^_^ Please remember to leave a comment and, if you liked this story, it is actually a part of an ongoing series. The next installment is called Domestic Life. I'd also like to let everyone know that I have a Tumblr account dedicated to this series (though you may want to avoid it if you haven't read all of it yet) where I answer any questions or thoughts that are shared. My Tumbler username is Nirah10.  
> Thanks again :)


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